


Hold Tight to the Ropes

by AddioKira



Category: Better Call Saul (TV)
Genre: AU, Complications, F/M, Flirting, Friendship, Phone Sex, Speculation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-14
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-03-17 18:48:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 43,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3540191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AddioKira/pseuds/AddioKira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kim and Jimmy have both had terrible days. But when Jimmy shows up uninvited on Kim's doorstep, he's the last person she wants to see. A speculative AU about Kim and Jimmy's history.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, and thank you for reading. This story is a speculation of what might have been the history of Jimmy and Kim's very strange relationship. It's being written following 1x6 ("Five-O), so I'm labeling it as an AU, as I'm sure canon will overtake my story at some point in the future. Still, it's been fun to consider what might have happened between these two, so I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it, no matter what future canon brings.

Kim tried to decide whether she wanted another glass of wine or a cigarette.

She didn't want the wine, not really. She’d downed half the bottle since coming home from work - only an hour ago - and if she kept going, she’d have a nasty hangover to deal with in the morning which she certainly didn't need.

A cigarette would be better - only if she had the cigarette, first she’d have to go out the door, down the stairs out the lobby, past the doorwoman who’d give her that look she always gives Kim when she goes out for a cigarette, and into the parking lot, the designated twenty-five feet from the building the apartment complex mandated.

 _I should just quit_ , Kim thought, not for the first time, not even for the first time that day. She knew she wouldn't. Not even on the worst days, when every drag tasted like she was sucking hot powdered shit through a straw did she think she’d quit for real. Sometimes she liked thinking about the kind of person she’d be if she did quit - the kind of person who had glossy hair that smelled expensive, who matched her bra and underwear every day, who didn't eat the same takeout meal four days out of seven, hunched over her computer keyboard, smearing the keys with grease as she typed and chewed at the same time.

She wasn't that person, and she wouldn't quit.

Kim didn't pour herself another glass of wine, and she didn't pick up her pack of cigarettes and lighter, even though both the bottle and the pack were on the end table at her elbow, within easy reach. She clutched the TV remote instead, flicking through channels, hating what she saw on each, her mind alternating from the wine to the cigarette to the wine again.

When her phone rang she jumped, shoulders tensing. Howard wouldn't be calling her, not _now_. She’d got her draft motion to him at four that afternoon, two days earlier than he’d asked for it, and she knew for a fact that he’d be in two meetings and then a client dinner this evening. He wouldn't have time to read it, to tell her she’d have to rewrite the entire thing because he’d just now remembered that he meant to tell her about the new argument he wanted to lead with.

She’d left her phone buried somewhere at the bottom of her handbag. She jumped to get it, causing the wine bottle to wobble precariously on the end table before it settled back onto its base. She had to scrabble through a mix of lipstick, loose change and breath mints before finding the phone. One look at the little display window at the front of the phone, and her shoulders sagged.

_Jimmy. Christ._

She almost didn’t answer. One more ring and it would have switched over to voicemail. But even while she considered this, she was thumbing the answer button, her hand bringing the phone to her ear. “What?”

“Hey-y!” Jimmy’s voice on the other end of the line, his exuberance compressed and thin, squeezing through the tiny device. “Hey Kimmy.”

Kim let out a breath. “Are you drunk?”

“ _No_ -o!” The immediate defensiveness in his voice said yes. Anyway, he never called her ‘Kimmy’ when he was sober.

Kim bit back a tongue click of disgust, and pressed her lips together. “What do you want?”

“Jeez, hostile. I just wanted to say congratulations!”

Kim opened her mouth, then closed it. “For what?” she asked. She hadn't meant for her tone to go as flat as it did, or for the words to sound so clipped.

Silence on the end of the line, then “oh.” Another silence, and he said “Really?”

“Yeah,” said Kim. “How did you even know, anyway? That it was today?”

“Ahh I was with Chuck. He told me it was gonna happen, he wished he could be there, you know.” A pause. “He said you were a shoe-in. It was your year.”

Kim gave a short little bark of a laugh. “Yeah,” she said. “Well. Guess it wasn't."

"Ah." Jimmy's voice deflated a bit, but he made an attempt to regain his usual buoyancy. "Next year though, right?"

"Right," said Kim, and because she couldn't stop herself, said "that's what Chuck told me last year."

That at least shut Jimmy up, but as she listened to him breathe on the other end of the line, she wished she hadn't said it.

"Listen," she said, trying to sand off the jagged edges of her tone. "It's late and I have three back to back client meetings tomorrow. Go to bed. I'll talk to you..." She paused, not wanting to make a definite commitment. "Y'know, soon, okay?"

"Aa-ah," Jimmy said, his voice going strained. “That might be a little bit of an issue.”

“What do you-” Kim started, then stopped, her stomach dipping. “Are you outside?”

“I just - thought you might want to celebrate! I didn't think you’d - y’know-”

Kim crossed her living room in two strides and yanked the blinds to her front windows. Three stories below, a figure in the parking lot raised its head and gave what looked to her like a sheepish sort of wave.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Kim hissed to herself before ending the call. She snatched her keys from out of her bag and was out the door, but not before she’d also swept her pack of cigarettes and lighter into her other hand.

She didn’t have the patience for the elevator, so instead she stomped her way down three flights of stairs, not caring that there would surely be a passive-aggressive notice on the lobby corkboard tomorrow morning about being “mindful of the noise we make and how it impacts our neighbors.” By the time she reached the lobby, her cigarette was parked in the corner of her mouth, earning her a reproving look from the doorwoman as she passed the front desk.

“It’s not lit,” she said waspishly, and slammed her way out of the double doors, flicking her lighter as soon as she stepped onto the paved walk leading to the parking lot. She strode towards the waiting figure, vaguely limned by the safety lanterns above, jetting a stream of smoke to one side and enjoying being angry at someone besides herself today.

“Tell me you didn’t drive here,” Kim said, casting around the lot for a sign of Jimmy’s piebald Esteem. She didn’t see it.

Jimmy, who’d been looking vaguely alarmed, relaxed a little. “Oh - nah, I was just at Randall’s and thought, hey, I’m in the neighborhood, why not walk over, pay my respects in person.” He shrugged. “I got you something.” Jimmy handed her a bottle of something cold that she held up to the faint overhead light. Champagne. Well, Freixenet, actually. For Jimmy, though, this was a splurge. Kim looked from it to Jimmy, plucking the cigarette from her mouth between two straight fingers, raising her eyebrows without saying anything.

“Hey, I’m sorry,” Jimmy said. “I had no idea they were gonna pass you up. Not in a million years. Even Chuck thought so, he was saying just this afternoon he thought-”

“Look, forget it,” Kim said. “It’s not a big deal. They just went with someone else this year, that’s all.”

“Well who’d they go with?”

“Uh, Simon Fisher?” When Jimmy’s look of incomprehension didn’t change she added “you don’t know him. He’s a lateral.”

“A lateral?” Jimmy’s expression shifted from incomprehension to incredulity. “They picked a lateral over _you_? That’s - that’s bullshit, okay? I’m gonna tell Chuck and he’s gonna-”

“I said _forget it_ ,” Kim said, louder than she meant to, loud enough that she took a quick glance at the doorwoman, who was watching them intently through the lobby window. With a sigh, she looked back at Jimmy, who was weaving a little, hands in his pockets and hair flopped over one eye. He was in no condition to drive himself anywhere, and considering the half bottle of wine she’d pounded in the last hour, neither was she. “Look,” she said, “just come in. I’ll call you a cab, okay?”

Jimmy didn’t answer at first. “Uh,” he said, then “sure. Yeah. Okay.”

“Come on,” Kim said, grinding her cigarette into the parking lot pavement

The doorwoman didn’t even try not to stare as Jimmy followed Kim back through the front doors into the lobby, and Kim tried not to think about what this must look like. A handful of associates at Hamlin McGill lived in the building, and still more lived in the cluster of higher end apartment buildings in the neighborhood. Buildings with doorpeople. Buildings with doorpeople who gossiped. With the tenants, with each other - Kim didn’t know exactly, but even a small rumor would be too much for her.

 _She has no idea who he is_ , Kim thought, rounding into the elevator bank and jamming the “up” button. _Even if they laugh about me bringing home some random guy with a bottle of cheap cava in the middle of the night, they don’t know who he is. It won’t get back to Howard. It won’t_. Somehow repetition didn’t equal reassurance, but it was the best thing she could get.

They didn’t talk in the elevator, and they didn’t talk in the hall. They didn’t talk when Kim opened the door to her apartment and pointed at the sofa. Kim didn’t wait for Jimmy to sit down, but thunked the bottle of Freixenet on the counter and started opening kitchen cabinets, trying to find her Yellow Pages. She knew it was in one of them, but couldn’t remember which.

She’d just unearthed a nest of takeout menus that she’d thought she’d misplaced three months ago, when Jimmy’s voice sounded from the living room. “I am gonna tell Chuck, you know.”

Kim let the menus sift through her hands like a flurry of limp paper birds, and stuck her head out of the kitchen entryway. “I don’t want you to.”

“Why?” Jimmy said. “He’s gonna find out anyway, he’s still the co-chair of the firm.”

“Yeah,” Kim said, hands on hips, emerging from the kitchen. “The co-chair. Right. You do understand what that means?”

“I told you, he said you were a shoe-in,” Jimmy insisted.

“If he were still acting as co-chair, he’d be part of the decision,” Kim interrupted. “And he wouldn’t have to hear about it from you through me. I don’t want to do that to him.”

Jimmy grimaced, pushing his hair back irritably. It fell straight back into his eye. “It’s not like that,” he said. “He’s just sick so he’s letting Howard make the decisions for him right now. When he gets better - this time next year, he’ll be back, and you’ll be set.” He clapped his hands once, then brought them, palms out, in front of him. “Bam, easy.”

Kim pursed her mouth and leaned against the doorway frame. “So that new doctor you were going to see, he figured it all out? Chuck’s treatment?”

She’d said it offhand, her voice hard, but when Jimmy’s hands dropped into his lap and his eyes flicked to the floor, she regretted it immediately. “Is he okay?”  she tried in a more gentle tone.

“Well, he’s home,” said Jimmy.

“What does _that_ mean?” Kim asked, forgetting for the moment to be gentle.

“It means he’s not bitching at me every five minutes telling me he _wants_ to go home!” Jimmy snapped, this time with a real crack in his voice. Kim pressed herself harder against the doorframe involuntarily, rearing her head so that it knocked into the wood.

Jimmy propped his elbows on his knees and rested his face in his hands, scraping the palms over his eyes and cheeks. “Sorry,” he said, without looking up.

Kim stayed pressed against the doorway frame for a moment. She’d never heard Jimmy snap like that - well, she _had_ , but not about Chuck. “Did something - I mean, happen?” she asked.

Jimmy didn’t answer, and didn’t take his hands away from his face. For one panicked moment Kim wondered if he was crying, but didn’t see his shoulders shake. Still, he was rubbing his eyes in a way she didn’t like. And it finally occurred to her to wonder at the fact that Jimmy, who was as tight on cash as he’d ever been, was out at Randall’s - one of the more expensive bars in Albuquerque - drinking enough to get this hammered on a weeknight.

So instead of going back into the kitchen and finding the yellow pages, she instead crossed to the living room to sit on the sofa. She tucked her feet under her, hunching into the corner, watching as Jimmy finally raised his head from his hands. He hadn’t been crying, but his eyes were red and irritated.

“Jimmy,” she said, “what happened?”

He turned to Kim, took a breath, and said

* * *

 

What happened was funny, at least at first. It was a good story to tell at cocktail parties or networking events, when you were trying to impress associates from other law firms with your war stories. Did you hear about the co-chair who stopped using his blackberry? Did you hear he got rid of the computer in his office? Won’t use e-mail any more? Such a luddite! We had to hire a legal assistant who could take dictation by shorthand - do you know how hard it is to find one these days? She’s older than he is! He insists she use a typewriter to transcribe everything, and instead of e-mails, his associates get hand-delivered typed messages in their inboxes. It’s so _funny_.

It’s funny until it begins to not be funny. As it turns out, accurately transcribing dictation takes a long time - longer than clients appreciate in the era of instant connectivity. Clients who expect quick e-mail correspondence begin to have to wait. And wait. And complain. Complain to assistants, complain to associates, complain to counsel - all of whose hands are tied, because he’s the co-chair. His name is on the firm letterhead, his initial emblazoned on the logo in Hamlindigo Blue. The complaints start out as good natured, then turn impatient, and finally barbed. A small business who hired Hamlin McGill for an employment litigation terminated the relationship with two weeks until the trial, because witness preparation was stymied by Chuck’s inability to respond to questions.

The first client defection rattled Kim, even though she hadn’t been working on the matter - she specialized in criminal litigation, not civil, and besides, she was swamped with a huge white collar matter involving SEC fraud, perjury, the works. The partner handling it wasn’t Chuck or Howard, it was Winnifred D’Angelo, a formidably smart equity partner who handled anything in criminal litigation that Howard didn’t. But there came the day, close to trial, when Kim identified a portion of obscure, partially outdated securities law that had a bearing on one of the issues, and knocked on Winnifred’s door with a question about it.

“This?” Winnifred said, tilting her half moon glasses down her nose to squint at the tiny pint of the US Code. “Mmm - that’s before my time, actually. But you know who could answer you? Try Chuck - I think he litigated a series of cases on this point in the 80s.” She smiled. “You ever hear him go? He remembers _everything_. Rulings, dissents, dicta-” she taps her head, “it’s all up there.”

Kim did try Chuck. It had been a few weeks since she'd spoken to him, anyway, and he'd always been a gracious, friendly presence at the firm; someone she enjoyed talking to. And yes, she had heard him "go," rattling off case names, decisions, judges, even footnotes like he had it all stored in one huge filing cabinet in his head. She crossed the hall to his corner office, noting with some amusement that not only were the lights in Chuck’s office out, the ones in the hall outside were out too. She waved to Chuck’s new assistant Phyllis as she passed her desk, then knocked on Chuck’s door.

“Come in!” said Chuck, his voice cheerful, buoyant. Like his brother's.

“Hi,” Kim said, entering the darkened office, “I just had a question about-” she stopped abruptly, because she didn’t see Chuck - he wasn’t sitting at his desk. “Uh, Chuck?” she asked.

Chuck’s head suddenly popped above the top of the desk. “Oh, Kim! Hi there. You’ll excuse me for just a moment, won’t you?” His head vanished below the desk, and Kim heard him begin to grunt and strain.

“Uh…” Kim said, not knowing what to do. “Do you need some help with something?”

“Nope…” Chuck said, “I’m - almost - got it!” A popping sound, and Chuck stood with his telephone in one hand, and a protruding wire from the other. He held the telephone at arms length, wrinkling his nose as though he was holding a multi-tentacled sea creature that had been rotting on a sunny beach for three weeks. He tossed it into a wastebin in the corner, wiped his hands down the front of his suit jacket, and grinned at Kim, crossing in front of the desk and walking towards her. “What can I-” he started, then stopped abruptly, his grin dropping. “Are you, ah, wearing anything with a battery?”

“A - what?” Kim asked, utterly baffled.

“There!” Chuck said, pointing at her watch. “There - and your cell phone. Anything with a battery. Could you please just leave them with Phyllis? She’ll show you.” He walked briskly to the door of his office and shouted into the hall. “Phyllis!” When he looked back up at Kim, he was grinning again. “She’ll show you,” he repeated.

Phyllis, sour-faced, showed Kim. She had a large metal box with a lid on top of her desk, and Kim patted herself down, depositing her watch and her cell phone. “So… nothing with a battery’s allowed in his office?” she asked in a whisper.

Phyllis shrugged. “Don’t ask me,” she said. “He brought this box in this morning and told me to start collecting electronics. I don’t know what he’ll want to do with me - I have a pacemaker and don’t dare tell him in case he fires me.”

“But - wait, he lets you in his office?” Kim asked.

“Oh sure, doesn’t seem to notice,” Phyllis said, with a small, lipstick-stained smile that turned into a puckery little frown quickly. “And don’t you tell him.”

“Oh - no,” Kim said, “of course not.”

When Kim entered the office again, Chuck was his usual self - gracious, personable, cheery. He knew exactly the statute Kim wanted to know about, and treated her to a meandering discussion that more than answered her question. Kim tried to pay attention, tried to take notes, but her eyes kept wandering to the wastebasket, to the dead phone with its tentacle wire hanging over the edge. And when she left Chuck, she didn’t go to Winnifred to thank her, and she didn’t go to her own office to transcribe her notes. Instead, she knocked on Howard’s door.

“Come in,” he said, though he was on the phone when she did. He motioned her to wait a moment as he wrapped up the call, hung up the phone, folded his hands on the desk, and smiled. “What can I do for you?”

 _They’re always smiling_ , Kim remembered thinking. _I wish they’d stop smiling_.

“Is something going on with Chuck?” she asked.

Howard laughed, a light, reassuring little laugh that gave Kim a knot in her stomach. “A little eccentricity,” he said. “Nothing to worry about.”

“Okay,” Kim said, “but I just saw him tearing his phone out of the wall.”

Howard’s smile seemed to freeze in place, becoming tacked down at the corners. “I’m sure that must have been a misunderstanding,” he said.

“I don’t think so,” said Kim.

Howard closed his mouth, but the ghost of his smile remained. He swiveled his chair to one side, and dialed Chuck’s extension on speakerphone. The line went straight to voicemail. Howard cut the line with a little peck of his forefinger.

“And he’s making people leave their… like, watches and cell phones and stuff outside his office. Did you know about that?”

Howard’s sudden frown said he didn’t. “Did you tell anyone else about this, Kim?” he asked.

“No!” she said quickly, not knowing why she felt so defensive. “No, I came straight to you.”

Howard’s smile returned, wider than ever. “Well,” he said briskly. “I appreciate you bringing this to my attention. Would you do me a favor?”

“Uh - sure,” Kim said. “What?”

“Don’t mention this to anyone, all right? I’d like to keep this quiet for now.”

“Yeah,” said Kim. “Yeah. That’s fine.”

And she didn’t tell anyone else. She went back to her office, transposed her notes, got back to work on her hearing prep, and tried to quell the fluttery feeling in her stomach.

* * *

 

“what happened was we went to Denver.”

“Denver?” Kim asked.

“Drove. We drove to Denver. _I_ drove to Denver. In my car.”

Kim’s eyes went wide. “What?”

“Yeah,” Jimmy says with a mirthless little chuckle, the corners of his mouth turning up a bit. “He said it was better - the odometer and fuel gauge and all that - they aren’t digital.”

“Cars still have batteries though,” Kim said, and Jimmy shrugged.

“Sure, but how else is he going to get anywhere? Plane?” He made a dismissive sound in the back of his throat. “Electromagnetic waves, radiation, whatever, coming in from - from space or something. Train? They _run_ on electricity, wires all along the tracks, all of that. Automobile’s the way to go. So he wrapped himself up in this - this aluminum foil blanket thing, craziest thing you’ve ever seen. He looked like one of those guys downtown with, you know, the hats?”

Kim felt her own mouth turn up involuntarily. “Poor Chuck.”

“Yeah, poor Chuck,” said Jimmy, sardonically. “He’s _really_ the one suffering here. I was just listening to him moan the entire time. You know he wouldn’t even eat anything cooked in a microwave? Or an electric oven? Our culinary horizons were severely curtailed, let me tell you.”

Kim laughed, one short burst, and Jimmy was smiling. “So what was there? In Denver?” Kim asked, getting her grin under control. “That new doctor?”

“Yeah, specialist," said Jimmy, his smile dropping a bit. “Said she’d treated a bunch of people with this electrosensitive stuff. Chuck was really, y’know. Hopeful. She’d be the one.”

“But she wasn’t?”

Jimmy screwed his mouth up, a sort of half-grimace, half-wince. “Actually it started out pretty great. Talking about his symptoms, how they sound familiar, how she had a patient who was experiencing this and that, and whatever, and maybe he should stay in this facility they have up there in the mountains, all this… it’s good stuff, I mean, he was responding pretty well. But then he started asking about the details of the treatment, and she starts getting, you know, evasive, wanting to talk to me outside, and - well. You know how Chuck deals with evasive witness - witnesses.”

Kim did know. She’d watched him in court, playing the smiling, genial attorney who was just a step behind the witness, trying his hardest to understand what he or she was trying to say, until finally the witness had talked himself into a corner and then Chuck’s trap snapped shut, and he pounced, skewering their inconsistencies and pulling the truth from them like a tooth from a rotting gum. “So what was it?”

“She said ‘cognitive therapy.’ And Chuck just… lost it. At both of us. Said we thought he was crazy, we were trying to trick him, we couldn’t understand the pain he was in. Accused me of taking him all the way to Denver where he didn't have anyone to look out for him so I could commit him. And get rid of him."

Kim tried to imagine it, but couldn't. Not Chuck. Not calm, reasonable Chuck who always kept his head and remained unflappable, even with the craziest clients, with the most unreasonable opposing parties. Kim wouldn't have believed that Chuck was capable of pitching some kind of fit. "By lose it, you mean-" she started.

"Screaming. Crying." Jimmy finished. "I think he broke a vase in the lobby or something. Yelling, begging me to take him home."

"So what did you do?"

"I took him home!" Jimmy said, giving an irritated shrug. He glanced at Kim's frown, frowned back. "Well what else was I supposed to do?"

"Uh, the therapy was sounding pretty good," Kim said.

"Against his will? No. I can't do that."

"Yes you can," replied Kim, "You know for a fact that you can involuntary commit a family member if he's a danger to himself and others." Jimmy let out another dismissive sound, so she talked over it. "If he's throwing a fit in a doctor's office-"

"He wasn't throwing a fit, he was upset-"

"He made you take a seven hour drive in that piece of shit you call a car-"

"He didn't _make_ me, I told him I would take him-"

“He’s dismissing doctors - _specialists_ \- who-”

“You think he’s dismissing specialists and he won’t run circles around any small-time therapist in this podunk town?” said Jimmy, his voice almost, but not quite, at a shout. “ _You_ know Chuck, _you_ know how smart he is. He was whipping out medical journal articles from - from Finland or Sweden or one of those countries, stuff this so-called specialist never even heard of!”

“Yeah?” said Kim, “and who found those for him?”

Jimmy opened his mouth, but didn’t say anything for a moment. He dropped his hands back to his lap, turned away. “He told me where to look.”

“I’m just saying,” Kim said, modifying her voice to what she hoped was a calm and understanding tone, “that you might want to look into other options, and therapy might be a good place to start.”

“And what are they gonna do, throw him in a room and turn on the lights and say ‘look, see, it’s all in your head?’ Why don’t I just throw him into a Turkish prison, huh?”

“I’m sure that’s not-” Kim started.

“He’s my brother,” Jimmy interrupted. “I can’t let them do that to him. He took care of me for years, now I have to take care of him.”

 _Have to or need to?_ is what Kim wanted to say, but didn’t. She pressed her mouth, tightening her lips around the words until she could swallow them back. Instead, she said “when did you get back?”

“This afternoon,” Jimmy said. “I got him settled, got him some groceries and just got out of there. If I stayed one more minute I was just gonna-” he balled one hand into a fist, and punched his other palm. As if this motion had miraculously pounded all hostility out him, Jimmy was smiling again, albeit in a self-deprecating sort of way. “Some kind of brother, huh?”

Kim smiled back. “I’d say so.”

Jimmy went back to rubbing his eyes with his palms. “I didn’t mean to unload on you,” he said.

Kim didn’t answer. She stood and went back to the kitchen, surveying the little pile of takeout menus on the floor, the cupboards, one of which could hold the yellow pages, and the bottle of Freixenet now sweating on the counter. Cupboards. Counter.

She walked to the counter, picked up the bottle, and tugged off the wire. One hard twist of her wrist, and she caught the cork in her palm, muffling the pop.

She didn’t have champagne flutes, but this stuff didn’t merit flutes. She pulled a pair of heavy-bottomed old fashioned glasses from the shelf, and tipped the bottle over one.

 _Hangover_ , came a warning voice in her head, right before the straw-colored liquid splashed into the glass.

_Well, whatever. Not like I’ve never gone to work with a_

* * *

 

 _hangover on the first day of work oh christ_ , she thought, heaving herself out of bed and into a sitting position. She took an inventory, bit by bit, as quickly as the toxic sludge that seemed to comprise her brain could manage. Teeth felt all right, no sweaters, she must have brushed them in what her law school roommate used to call “drunk autopilot.” Makeup off too, and pajamas on. But her head was throbbing, her stomach heaved, and she couldn’t for the life of her remember how she’d gotten home the night before.

 _You warned yourself about this_ , she thought, and she had. She’d lectured herself in her head as she’d brushed her hair into a ponytail the night before. _One drink, two at most. Vodka tonics, even though they’re gross, and then tonic water if you stick around. Home early. First day of work tomorrow._

God, what had happened? She tried to think as she took herself through the motions of the morning. Big pot of coffee, hot shower, a sparkle of makeup to cover the more egregious signs of last night's excess.

 _They won't know_ , she told herself. _Long as you act like you're fine, they're gonna think you're fine. Fake it til you make it_.

But all the rhyming cliches in her head weren't doing much about the roiling nausea in her gut. She tried to tamp it down with coffee, aspirin and toast. She took one bite of the toast, put it down again, and went to get dressed.

She looked okay, she thought, examining herself in her bedroom mirror. There would be no reason for her co-workers to suspect how sick she felt. Except - would they? She'd gone out with them after all, the new batch of Hamlin McGill first years, chosen fresh out of law school, and just emerged from the gauntlet of the New Mexico bar exams. Her new co-workers celebrating their last night of freedom - not to mention, their last night of poverty. Had she said anything weird? Done anything stupid?

Okay, start from the beginning. She'd walked the six blocks from her new apartment to the faux-dive, faux-Irish bar downtown, the one that was popular with older college and grad students from UNM. She'd laid herself the ground rules about the drinks, but when everyone in the group began ordering vodka tonics (watery, domestic beer for the guys), she'd gotten inexplicably annoyed, and ordered an old fashioned, no fruit instead. After all, she'd told herself while trying to make awkward small talk, it's just the one. But when Madison Burns, a redhead with a Prada bag she insisted have a chair of its own rather than being placed on the floor, wrinkled her upturned nose at the drink and said she thought maybe her grandma liked to drink those, Kim ordered another.

The small talk grew more insufferable as the night wore on, and Kim found herself sucking the dregs of the watered down cocktail with her stirrer sticks, wishing she could either get another drink or go home. Then Ronald Short, one of the beefier guys, announced that it was time to settle up; they were going to another bar.

"I didn't know this was gonna be a crawl," she muttered half to herself and half to Madison as she counted out singles. Madison half turned to her, raised her eyebrows, then turned back to the conversation she was having with Lila Ho, something about giving her boyfriend an ultimatum of six months before either getting engaged or breaking up. _Jesus, they're doing personal relationship talk already?_ she thought, panicking that she was falling behind in the small talk triple crown.

They walked another four blocks to a bar that was a little smaller, a lot quieter, and more dive than faux. Ronald and Devaj Gupta headed to the bar to get drinks while the rest of them arranged themselves around a set of tables in a corner. When the drinks came, it was vodka tonics and beer all round, to Kim's increased annoyance. "Actually, she said, "I was having-" but she was drowned out by Ronald launching into a story about one of his law school housemates getting so fucked up on Adderall before an exam that he'd tried to drive with a boot on the wheel of his car. Everyone else was laughing uproariously at this. "Okay," said Kim, “I'm just gonna...." She trailed off and squeezed out of her seat. As she weaved through tables toward the bar, she saw Madison put her Prada bag on it.

This was the moment, Kim knew, to slip out, walk home, get to bed and get a good night's sleep. But while the sensible part of her brain was well aware of this, the prickly, easily irritated and admittedly sort of buzzed part of her revolted. Why should she get chased out of this stupid bar? If she wanted another drink, she was damn well going to have one.

She found an empty space among the low-backed bar chairs, got the bartender's attention, and asked for an old fashioned, no fruit. While she waited, she tried to think of something, anything to start a conversation with the group of her soon-to-be colleagues behind her. _I can't be the bitch_ , she thought. _I have to work with these people, they can't decide I'm the bitch before work even starts_.

The bartender put the drink down in front of her, and as she dipped into her handbag for her wallet, she heard a voice to her right.

"Buy that for you?"

She glanced around, startled. The speaker was sitting at the bar, about two chairs down. Older, but kind of cute in spite of that, trying to draw attention from his receding hairline with a longish fringe combed carefully to one side. Eyes crinkled at the corners, but also blue and sharp. Voice pleasantly gravelly. Suit and tie, both middle-of-the-road. Taken as a whole, not her type, but not bad.

Kim smiled, a tight, dismissive little smile. "Oh - thanks, but-"

"You're with one of those chuckleheads over there?" he asked, jerking his head back toward the cluster of first year associates. Kim looked back. Ronald had finished his Adderall story, and seemed to have moved on to an epic tale of beer pong.

"No," she said. "Well, not _with_ them with them. They're... co-workers."

"Ah-h," the man said. "And a very professional group they seem." Ronald had by this point hoisted Madison up by the waist to illustrate a point in his story, and she was shrieking in mock-indignation, her feet kicking and her skirt hiked up one thigh.

"Oh god," muttered Kim.

The man leaned over toward her, aping the distant curiosity of an anthropologist, but, Kim suspected, also getting a better view of the state of Madison's skirt. "What's the sexual harassment policy in your office, out of curiosity?" he said.

"Well," Kim said, "I don't know yet, tomorrow's our first day."

“I’m guessing you find out in few weeks. Month, tops.”

“You might have a point,” Kim said.

He turned back to her, eyebrows raised. “Sure about that drink?”

Kim looked from the man to the group. Madison had been set back on her feet and was now playfully pushing Ronald’s shoulder, and tossing her sheaf of red hair. Everyone else was engaged in one conversation or another. If she went back, she’d have to plunge in cold, pull up a new chair, pick a conversation to hover over until she could get a word in edgewise so that she could pretend she hadn’t been staring and listening in. Do that, or get hit on by a guy who was almost but not quite edging over the line of skeeviness. Creep or be creeped on.

Kim swung herself into the bar chair beside the man. “Okay,” she said, lifting her arms in a slight shrug. “Give me your best shot.”

The man seemed impressed by this, and the slight smirk on his face widened, slowly, into a grin. He signaled the bartender. “On me,” he said, pointing to Kim’s drink, and sliding his own now-empty glass over. “And one of the same.” He turned back to Kim. “What’s your name?”

“Kim,” she said, feeling no need to go into surnames. “You?”

“Charles,” he said. “Call me Charlie.”

“Okay,” she said, bemused at both Charlie’s directness and her own decision to abandon her new colleagues, “hi, Charlie.”

“Hello Kim,” he said, taking the fresh drink the bartender was handing him - something brown on ice with a lemon peel floating in it. At a nicer bar, the peel would have been plump, sliced from a fresh lemon. At this one, it was old and looked dessicated, like a piece of mummified yellow skin. Kim was jolted a little by the thought. _Better make this the last drink_. But then, Charlie was holding his glass out to her. “And congratulations on the new job.”

“Thank you,” Kim said, and clinked her glass on his.

 

Kim tried to piece together their conversation as she wrestled her queasy body into her brand new suit, brushed her hair into its customary ponytail, and triple checked the orientation material in her briefcase. She poured the rest of her pot of coffee into a thermos and walked out the door of her apartment, down the stairs, and out the lobby, wincing a little in the glare of the sun reflected from the parking lot. She had a spare pair of sunglasses in her glove compartment, and she shoved them on her face even before she fastened her seatbelt. Still, she was okay - she was on time to make the orientation breakfast, thank god. “It’s fine,” she whispered to herself, as she started the car. “No problem. It’s okay.”

She could remember laughing, that was for sure - Charlie had a rapid-fire patter that refused to light on any particular topic for very long. One moment he was telling her about a prank he’d pulled on a teacher as a teenage stoner in Illinois, the next moment treating her to an analysis of her new co-workers’ drug habits based on observation.

 

“Okay okay,” he said, “watch this one. This one I call ‘Special Agent Jeffrey Steele - FBI.’” He did a mock hand-as-gun pose, which caused Kim to snort into the fresh drink she hadn’t remembered ordering.

“Jeffrey Steele?” she said, giving him a skeptical look. “That’s a porno name.”

“Hey, you said it, not me. But seriously, look,” he said, reaching over and swiveling the back of her bar chair so that she was facing the group of Hamlin McGill first years. She noticed that he did this in a way that left his right arm draped over the back of her chair, his fingers lightly brushing her shoulder, while he leaned into her, bringing his left hand in front of them both, so that she was practically in his arms. She checked herself to see whether she minded this, and found she didn’t - rather, she was impressed. It was a pretty slick move.

“So that one, over there, the big one,” he said, pointing to Ronald, who was now in the corner talking animatedly to Madison, “total cokehead. Started on pot, but realized he had to buckle down, become a productive member of society, but couldn’t give up on the mind altering substances altogether. Solution? Coke, all the way.”

“I heard Adderall, actually,” Kim said.

“Eh,” said Charlie, shrugging. “Adderall’s diet coke. He’ll be on the real deal soon if he isn’t already. Now, firecrotch next to him-”

Charlie cut off as Kim elbowed him in the chest. “Ew!” she said, in wide-eyed mock offense.

Charlie clutched his chest, faking that she’d hurt him more than she actually had. “ _Ow_ , be gentle with me!” he said with a smirk. “Okay, fine.” Left hand back in front of them both, right hand gave one surreptitious stroke of her shoulder that she was sure he would play off as accidental if she called him on it. “This young lady, who I’m sure is very personable, and whom I would never disparage based on my assumptions on the state of her secondary sexual characteristics-”

“ _Much_ better, thank you,” said Kim, settling back into her chair.

“She’s benzos, anything she can get her hands on. Valium, Xanax, doesn’t matter.”

“That I can see,” Kim mused, “that Prada bag of hers does rattle a bit.”

“Now, him,” Charlie said, pointing to Devaj, “he’s your garden variety recreational stoner. Pot only, and just when he’s with his old high school friends, never buys his own supply. A dilettante. Her…” his hand moved to indicate Lila. “I was thinking straight and narrow but now… speed, I’m gonna say speed. Weight loss mostly, some studying, but very careful about how she uses and when. Terrified of getting caught, using just makes it worse. She’ll flush her stash if the mailman knocks too loud.”

“So what are you, a drug dealer or something?” asked Kim.

“Uh, _excuse_ me,” Charlie replied, fake-offended, “I’ve already broken my cover for you, and the FBI doesn’t take kindly to leaks.”

“If you’re investigating drugs, shouldn’t you be with the DEA?” asked Kim.

“Okay, whose porn star identity are we talking about here, yours?” said Charlie, “because if yours is in the DEA, that’s fine, but I’m in the FBI. Much sexier organization. Though, ah,” he said, leaning closer to Kim’s ear. “I have heard that the agencies are known, to, you know, collaborate from time to time.”

Kim grinned, and shoved Charlie back with her right hand. “Yeah, that’s not going to happen.” She swiveled her chair back around to face the bar. “Sorry Steele. You’re a rogue agent, and I can’t let you on this case. I work... _alone_.” She cocked her fingers gun style at him, then snapped them up to the ceiling. “Peww.”

And despite her escape from his very slick clutches, he grinned at her wider than ever.

 

Kim thought of all this, driving to her new job in the early morning sun, squinting behind her sunglasses, holding a cigarette out of the window, trying to ignore the pounding in her head. All of that, it was fine. Better, actually, it had been a good night. Instead of the boring, awkward chit-chat she’d envisioned, she was laughing and playing around. Instead of being ignored, she was getting flirted with. Instead of going home to pace her apartment and fret about the coming work day, she was having fun.

 _Maybe that’s why I did it_ , she thought, as she turned into the Hamlin McGill parking garage, relaxing slightly as the New Mexico late summer light gave way to the cool and dark of the underground space.

 

She noticed all at once when the bar got quiet, looked around and saw that it had emptied out. All of the first years had gone. _When did that happen?_ she thought blearily. “God, what time is it?” she asked, then looked at her watch, answering her own question. Fifteen til one. “Uch. I have to get home,” she said.

“You’re sure?” Charlie said, “Because you know, we could-”

“Nope, sorry,” she said. “First day of work, remember? This was fun, though. Thanks.”

“Okayy, he said, “Well. My pleasure.” He signaled, and the bartender, who seemed to have been hovering, handed him the check. She hadn’t noticed the bartender either, what the hell?

Charlie slapped a credit card onto the bill without looking at it.  "I could walk you home, maybe, or-"

"Really, I'm fine," said Kim. "I'm just a few blocks away." But was that right? What direction had they gone in from that other bar, anyway? For some reason she couldn't quite remember.

"Well right, but listen, it's pretty late, and I was just thinking you might want someone-"

"Look," Kim said, putting her hand up in front of her. “This was really nice, and I appreciate the drinks, but anything other than that, it’s not gonna happen. Okay?”  

Jimmy shrugged and gave her a half-disappointed _I tried_ sort of look, which struck her as inexplicably funny.

“I can give you an A for effort at least?” she said. “I mean, the swivel chair move, that was pretty solid.”

“Well. Thank you, that’s very comforting,”

“Don’t be a dick, I said thank you, I mean-” she started, but suddenly couldn't think of anything to say. So instead, she did the only thing she could think of doing, which was cupping his chin in her hands, pulling his face toward hers, and kissing him on the mouth.

He took one sharp breath, and Kim realized she'd taken him completely by surprise. For one rather panicked moment she thought he'd pull away, but he didn't, instead grasping her wrist in one hand and sliding his tongue into her mouth. All of this, Kim reflected, was very nice. Not a bad end to a fun night.

When the kiss ended, he still didn't pull away, but kept his forehead resting on hers, noses touching. "So," he said, "I’m just gonna ask. Do you maybe want to-"

A slam on the bar startled them both into jumping back, and turning to the bartender, who had slammed their check down in front of Charlie. "You're gonna do that, you need to get a room. We're closing up."

This, Kim decided, was her cue to exit. "Okay," she said, "see you." She stood and took two steps before the force of the bourbon she'd put away came down on her like a sledgehammer, and she stumbled, falling backwards. Charlie caught her an instant before her head hit the bar.

"Hey," he said, " you okay?"

Kim tried to right herself, which was somehow extremely difficult. "I'm fine," she said, "fine."

"Okay," Charlie said, "let's get you home, huh?"

"Really," Kim said, "I'm okay."

"Any problem, Mr. McGill?" the bartender asked, pointedly.

"Nope!" Charlie replied, his voice full of false cheeriness. "We were just getting a cab, right Kim?"

"It's okay, I can walk, I just-"

"I was gonna get one anyway, you share one with me, you're doing me a favor. Okay?"

Kim wasn't quite sure how that worked, but she relented. "Okay. God. I'm sorry."

"Nah," Charlie said as they headed to the door, him holding her by the elbow so she didn't stumble. "Happens to the best of us."

 

And that's how she had gotten home - the cab had dropped her at her apartment building, and she, recovered a bit from the night air, was able to get herself in, giving a quick wave to the cab before it drove off with Charlie. _Well, that's one mystery solved_ , she thought in the parking garage with her head on the steering wheel. God. Embarrassing. But it was over now, and she'd probably never see Charlie again, so she ought to just grab her stuff, get into the office, and get on with her day as best she could.

Except.

There was just one thing niggling at the back of her mind, something that bugged her, something someone had said that she couldn't quite remember, something important. She tried to think of it, racking her fuddled brain, but couldn’t come up with anything aside from more dull throbbing. Finally, she glanced at her watch and realized that the orientation brunch started in two minutes.

Frantic, she leaned over to the passenger seat only to find that her briefcase hadn’t been clasped properly, and had spilled her orientation material in the passenger well. Hissing curses to herself, she bent over, and gathered it in a wad of glossy print. H _amlin McGill Welcomes You! Hamlin McGill - Our Practice At a Glance! Hamlin McGill - Value Added Service!_ They all slid through her slightly numb fingers as she tried to arrange them in a neat pile to shove back into her case. And that’s when she remembered. McGill.

_Any problem, Mr. McGill?_

The bartender, who’d probably picked up the name from the credit card.

McGill. _Charles_ McGill.

“Oh no,” she whispered to herself, crumpling the brochures between her now sweating fingers. “Oh my god, no.”

It couldn’t be him, she thought. How common a name was it, McGill? And Charles - practically one out of ten guys must be named Charles, right? It was up there with David and Sam, as far as common names went. But still, she couldn’t shake it. What were the odds, meeting a Charles McGill the day before you start at the law firm co-founded by Charles McGill? She felt suddenly nauseated. If she’d just made out with, then got poured into a cab by her new boss - no not boss, _uber_ -boss, what was going to happen to her? She pictured it, him coming in, not being able to meet her eye, the awkward nod, the wince of a smile, and then - what, would she be let go before she could even start her new job as a prophylactic measure against sexual harassment claims? Certainly they’d need to look out for the firm’s insurance, the bottom line. Her breath was coming fast, her heart pounding. For one wild moment, she pictured herself starting her car again, flooring it, getting on the highway and heading to Mexico to - well do what, exactly?

She checked her watch again. Now it was one minute past the breakfast start time. Now was the moment to decide. Mexico - or up the stairs?

She clenched her hand around the handle of her briefcase, closed her eyes, took three deep breaths. _Mexico will always be there, but this job won’t._

She slammed herself out of the car and walked toward the elevator bank, her heels clacking against the concrete floor.

 

“Well! There’s our straggler! Welcome, I’m Brenda.” The receptionist, in a trim blouse and skirt, with her hair twisted up, looked impossibly cool and collected to Kim, who only hoped that she hadn’t sweated through her suit blazer.

 _Straggler, just great_. “Hi, I’m Kim. Wexler.”

“Well great Kim, it’s just this way.” To Kim’s relief, Brenda did not offer to shake hands, and walked in front of her on the way to the second floor conference room, allowing Kim to surreptitiously wipe her palms on her suit jacket.

The second floor conference room was rife with the smells of cooling breakfast food, and even ten feet away, Kim’s stomach turned over. Everyone was there, holding paper plates and cups of coffee, chatting amiably. There seemed to be a make-your-own breakfast burrito bar, which Kim assiduously avoided, turning instead to the counter that held plain bagels. She was just taking a tiny test-nibble, when a voice sounded behind her. “Oh my God! Kim!”

Kim’s stomach did another flip as she turned around to see Madison, coiffed, lip glossed and bright-eyed. “Um.” Kim said, “Yeah?”

Madison put one hand on Kim’s shoulder. “I am so sorry about last night. We were heading to P.J.’s, and Lila and I turned around, and you just weren’t there! I can’t believe we lost you, I’m so, _so_ sorry.”

Kim stood for a moment, her mouth open. “Oh,” she said, “no big deal. I just got a cab home.”

“Oh good,” Madison gushed. “Listen, _please_ come out with us again, we were thinking of going Friday, you know, celebrate our first week? I’ll buy you a drink, make it up to you?”

“Um, sure, that sounds really nice,” Kim replied, completely baffled. Maybe she’d misjudged Madison after all - and now she felt a little terrible about laughing about her supposed benzodiazepine habit the night before. She took a bite out of her bagel as an excuse to not say anything else.

“Welcome everyone!” came a voice from the front of the room, near the burrito bar. Kim craned her neck, and could just see a man in an almost painfully coordinated blue suit with blond hair. Howard Hamlin, she knew. He was on all of the Hamlin McGill publicity material that needed to feature one of the lawyers, and he was certainly photogenic. “And congratulations to you all on the start of what I’m sure will be brilliant legal careers. My name is Howard Hamlin, and I’d like to introduce you to Charles McGill."

Kim craned her neck, but her view was blocked by Ronald, who seemed to be clutching two burritos. _Okay_ , she told herself, _come_ _on_. She stepped past Madison, walking almost on tiptoe. She was halfway across the room when she saw him, standing next to Howard Hamlin - a stocky man in a grey wool suit with ashy hair and a genial smile. She had never seen him before.

Everything seemed to clear at once - Kim’s headache, her nausea, her sweating palms. Suddenly the world became bright and beautiful once again. Everything was going to be okay.

“Good morning!” said Charles McGill. “We’re so excited to get you started in your new careers. Law is a difficult, demanding profession, but if you’re diligent and do the work, we’re positive that your careers here at Hamlin McGill will flourish.”

Howard’s smile was looking a little forced - he seemed to be looking at Charles as though he was a sweet but doddering father figure - but at this point, Kim didn’t care. She believed every word Charles said.

After the welcoming speeches, they made the rounds, Hamlin and McGill, introducing themselves, shaking hands, smiling, always smiling. When it was Kim’s turn, she shook hands with dry palms. “Good morning Mr. McGill,” she said.

“Oh, please,” he replied, “call me Chuck.”

“ _Chuck_ ,” she repeated, pronouncing it reverently. It was the most beautiful name in the world. “Hi, Chuck.”

He gave her a bemused, slightly puzzled smile, and moved on.

 

Kim quickly found that despite Howard’s attitude, it was Chuck who was largely correct about legal practice, at least in one’s first year. You had to buckle down and do the work - and if there was one thing she was good at, it was doing the work. She threw herself into it gleefully, revelling in the knowledge that, now that she was out of school, she was making a difference in other people’s lives, not just her own. Work consumed her days and nights, and she was hungry for it. It even lubricated her social interactions - now she didn’t have to go through the small talk triple crown with her new colleagues. Why talk about yourself when you could talk about work?

This was the life she’d imagined for herself when she first decided to go to law school - busy, bustling, hard, but rewarding with those little moments of triumph when you solved a problem or proposed a solution that fit the situation just right. And the bigger bursts when they went into litigation and won. She got to observe her first couple of trials - Howard first-chaired one, and Chuck another. She was dazzled by them both - by Chuck whipping out precedent like it was nothing to pull complex case law from memory right out of his head. By Howard, who was charming, easy to like; he could hold a jury in the palm of his hand, and seemed to have a sixth sense in _voir dire_ as to who he needed in the box, who would ultimately fall to their side. The big victories were theirs, the trial wins, the jury verdicts. But she had enough little ones - finding just the right case to answer a question, just the right regulation that had to be applied - to keep her not only satisfied, but hungry for more. Life felt good to her, as fresh and clean as a fall morning.

And it was a fall morning - October actually - when it happened. She’d been put on one of Chuck’s cases, tasked with gathering the product of several associates’ research, and putting it into a coherent outline for a deposition. She sweated through the work late into the night, but when she read it over again in the morning, she thought it read well. She printed the final version, and headed over to Chuck’s office to deliver it.

Chuck’s office door, usually open, was closed, and she could hear voices sounding behind it - but not loud enough that she could make out the words. She hesitated in front of the door. Chuck had asked for the outline as soon as possible, and she was never late returning assignments. She’d at least knock, she supposed - if he was too busy, he’d tell her to come back later.

At her knock, the voices went silent, and there was enough time for Kim’s stomach to twist a bit before she heard Chuck say “come in.”

She opened the door. Chuck was in the middle of the room, walking toward the far window as though pacing. And in a chair at his coffee table, facing her, was Charlie from the bar. He had his mouth half-open, as though he were about to say something to Chuck, but instead stopped, raised his eyebrows, blinked.

“Well hello to you,” he said, beginning a smile.

Kim had just enough wherewithal to tamp down the look of unadulterated horror she felt forming on her face before Chuck turned around. “ _Jimmy_ ,” he said, in a scolding sort of tone. “This is one of our new associates, Kim Wexler.” He turned to Kim. “Excuse him, please. My brother, Jimmy.”

Kim now opened her mouth to say something, but forgot what she was going to say. “Uh,” was all that came out.

“Is that my depo outline?” Chuck asked, pointing to the manila folder in her hand.

“Ye-yes,” Kim said, handing it over.

“Thank you,” he said, opening it and turning away. By this time, Char - _Jimmy_ \- was on his feet, hand extended.

“Nice to meet you, Kim,” he said, a subtle emphasis on the “meet.”

She took his hand, but all she could say was “Jimmy,” in an incredulous tone.

Jimmy shrugged, half-smiling.

Chuck turned around again. “Thank you, Kim,” he repeated, and Kim knew this meant she was dismissed. She tried to come up with something intelligible to say, failed, turned on her heel and was out the door, walking down the hall as fast as she could go.

When she got back to her office, she snatched up her handbag, and kept going down the hall to the elevator bank, hardly daring to breathe until the doors closed behind her and the car started down to the parking garage - the only place employees were allowed to smoke. She leaned her head against the side wall. His brother. His _brother_.

She clicked her way out of the elevator and through the glass doors into the yawning space of the parking garage, and slumped against the wall. What the hell was she going to do now? All she needed was for her co-chair’s sleazeball _liar_ brother to start mouthing off about her and completely torpedo her hard-fought reputation at this firm before she’d even really gotten started.

She groped in her bag without looking, staring at the ceiling in the far distance, until she unearthed the fresh pack of cigarettes she’d tossed in before leaving for work that morning. Usually she kept a lighter tucked into a pack, but as this one was unopened, she’d just tossed her lighter into the bag as well. Now, after unpeeling the cellophane and parking a cigarette in her mouth, she started raking at the bottom of the bag, searching. She found a hairbrush, several lipsticks, mints, change, hair ties - but no lighter. Her search became faster as her frustration mounted, until finally, she let the bag fall onto the floor, and pressed both palms to her eyes.

“Oh my god,” she breathed, “oh my god, oh my god.” She tried her deep breathing, but there was a funny twinge in her chest at the top of each inhale.

A sound to her right made her start - the door opening - and when she took her hands away from her eyes, Jimmy was standing there next to her. They locked eyes, Kim startled enough to freeze with her unlit cigarette still hanging out of her mouth. Jimmy pursed his lips as though considering her, then plucked a pen from the inside pocket of his jacket. It was, Kim noticed, a Hamlin McGill ballpoint, likely filched from his brother’s desk. He clicked it a little ostentatiously, and proceeded to write something in one cupped palm. He de-clicked the pen, put it away, and looked back at Kim, who hadn’t moved. With one quick flick of his wrist, he tossed something small at her, and she caught it, one-handed, just before he walked away.

It was a matchbook from Randall’s, one of the nicer bars near her apartment building. Well, that was helpful at least - she tore out a match and lit her cigarette, cupping the tip as Jimmy’s footsteps echoed somewhere in the depths. She closed her eyes for the time it took to take three deep drags - _much better than deep breathing_ , she thought. Only then did she flip the matchbook over to see what he’d written.

_Have a drink w/me?_

_9 pm_

_-Jimmy_

If she’d expected something, it hadn’t been that. She closed the matchbook with one thumb, craning her neck to see into the shadows of the parking garage. “Seriously?” she shouted into the gloom. If he heard her, he didn’t answer.

 

By eight, as she finished up a draft in her office, she was convinced she wasn't going. By eight-fifteen, unlocking her apartment door, she thought she'd at least check if she had anything relatively clean to wear. By eight-forty, she was considering which handbag to bring with her, and by eight-fifty, she was out the door.

She strode into Randall's wearing her best "fuck-you" heels - high enough to push her already tall frame over the six foot mark and, in her experience, to terrify any guy shorter than six-two - and carrying the handbag she had decided was perfect for the occasion, a black leather clutch, studded with hardware. She saw Jimmy sitting at the corner of the bar, watched his face lift when he saw her, then fall again when he registered the expression on her face.

Once she was close enough to talk without anyone else overhearing, she said, through gritted teeth, "You. Complete. _Ass_." She swung her clutch backhand, and it connected with a satisfying _thwack_ to his arm. Definitely the perfect handbag for the occasion.

"Ow, _Jesus_ ," Jimmy squawked, clutching his arm. "I asked you here to apologize, okay?"

Kim crossed her arms in front of her, stood leaning on one hip. "Apologize. Really."

"Yes. God. Just... Sit down wouldya and try not to beat me up too much? I have a delicate constitution."

Kim didn't move, except to cock one eyebrow.

"Seriously. Sit down, please.” He brought his hands together in front of him. “I’m _very_ very sorry, but would you please hear me out?”

“I don’t-” Kim started, but was interrupted by the bartender placing a glass in front of them.

“Old fashioned, no fruit?” he asked.

“For the lady,” Jimmy replied, his tone indicating that he was using the word “lady” only in its loosest sense. He looked back to Kim, gestured to the stool next to him. “Please.”

Kim let out a measured breath, and decided. “Okay,” she said, and sat. “Get back to the part where you’re _very_ very sorry.”

Jimmy shot her a glare and picked up his drink, rattling the ice. “I would never have used Chuck’s name if I’d known you were one of his associates, okay?”

“Yeah, well, I’m not exactly in the habit of giving out my resume to strangers in bars,” said Kim, picking up her own drink and stirring the ice with the sticks.

“A wise move, I’m sure,” Jimmy said sarcastic.

“Anyway, that’s like saying ‘sorry you were offended,’” said Kim. “Why use his name in the first place, what’s wrong with Jimmy?”

“Okay, hey, Jimmy is an excellent name, don’t get me wrong,” Jimmy started. When Kim shot him a glare, he put down his drink and raised both hands in front of him. “Fine,” he said. “I’m in town, visiting my brother, we get along okay. But sometimes he has to work, or see clients, or just wants me out of his hair, so we’ve developed sort of a don’t-ask-don’t-tell kind of thing. I get the credit card, I head out, let him do whatever, he doesn’t ask what I’m up to.”

“Um,” Kim said, narrowing her eyes, “so you take his card and he doesn’t ask about the bill-”

“And I don’t tell him!” Jimmy replied. “Win-win.”

“And if some unwitting woman happens to fall under the impression that you’re the co-chair of a major local law firm-”

“Let’s just say it doesn’t hurt my chances any,” he said, with a slight shrug and a smirk.

“Okay, _wow_ ,” Kim said, “that is actually kind of foul.” But despite this, the corners of her mouth were quirking up.

“Yeah, well, I don’t argue with what works,” Jimmy said. “Still, one of my brother’s associates is out of line. You’re off limits. So,” he extended his hands toward her, palms up, bowing over them slightly. “I apologize.”

“Well,” Kim said, “okay. Considering you got me home in one piece, apology accepted.”

Jimmy exhaled through his teeth. “Thank you,” he said, picking his drink up again. “And, uh, would you mind just… not saying anything about it? Just as, you know, professional courtesy maybe.”

“Wait,” Kim said, setting her drink down a little too hard, “are you afraid _I'm_ going to tell Chuck?”

“I mean - it’s just in keeping with our agreement,” Jimmy blustered. “He doesn’t ask, we don’t tell, win-win-win. Everybody wins! Hooray-y!” The desperation in his voice pushed close to the surface.

Kim closed her eyes as a mixture of disbelief and relief washed over her in equal parts. "So you didn't tell him?"

" _No_ , of course not!" asked Jimmy, sounding a little horrified. "You should have heard him read me the riot act because he thought I used the wrong _tone_ with you." he gave her a sidelong glance as he sipped at his drink. "Chuck's smarter than everyone in that office put together, you know - uh, no offense."

"None taken."

"He can read people; he could tell you were upset, he thought it was because of me-"

"Well, I mean, to be fair, he was completely right-"

"Aa-ah." said Jimmy, swatting at the air as though this were a mere triviality. "I figure I apologize, make it right, Chuck doesn't need to get involved - whattaya say?"

"Well, I'll make you a deal," Kim said archly. "I agree not to tell Chuck if you promise to stop trawling for trim using his name."

"Okay, that is a _very_ inappropriate term, Ms. Wexler, and I must say, I'm shocked-" he stopped after Kim hit him with her handbag again, but not too hard - her heart was no longer in it. "Okay, okay," Jimmy said, "fine." he reached out his hand, and she took it, giving one shake.

"Deal," she said, and almost limp with relief,  she settled her elbow on the bar top, propping her head in her hand. “God,” she breathed, half to herself. “You would not have _believed_ the morning I had-” She cut herself off before saying more, but it was already too late.

“Wa-ait,” Jimmy said, his eyes narrowing with sudden comprehension. “You didn’t go to work thinking-”

Kim grimaced. “I did.”

Jimmy blinked at her and then broke, first snorting and then bursting into laughter. And suddenly Kim was laughing too, so hard she had to fold her arms on the bar and bury her face in them.

“No, no, shhh,” Jimmy said, “I’m trying to picture the look on your face. Oh - wait - there-” he lifted his hands in front of him as though framing a picture, and closed his eyes. “That’s it, right there. My entire life has culminated in this moment.”

“Shut _up_ ,” Kim moaned, now too wrung out even to lift her handbag.

“No, seriously, what were you going to do if it turned out to be me?”

“Well, driving to Mexico was looking like an extremely attractive option,” she said, which sent Jimmy off laughing again. Kim rolled her head to one side. “God,” she said. “I’m such a fuck-up.”

“What? _No_ ,” Jimmy said, suddenly turning to her with an incredulous expression. “Are you kidding?”

“I didn’t see anyone else getting smashed and possibly making out with the co-founder of the law firm, did you?” Kim said, sitting back up and reaching for her drink.

“Hey, falling for the old McGill charm is nothing to be ashamed of,” Jimmy offered, but he recoiled when Kim brandished her handbag again. “Look,” he said, conciliatory. “You’re not a fuck-up. And trust me, I know from fuck-ups.”

Kim didn’t say anything, but sipped her drink through her stirrer straws ostentatiously.

Jimmy let out a sigh through his nose and propped himself on the bar. “All right. I’ll tell you something, might make you feel better. I moved out here because I got into… well, a kerfluffle back in Cicero-”

“Kerfluffle?” Kim asked.

“Just - you know, stupid kid’s stuff, got blown way out of proportion. But, you know, Chuck’s the one who bailed me out, on the condition that I move west, check in with him every couple weeks or so, make sure I’m on the straight and narrow. So. You want a fuck-up, you have the genuine article right here. You, on the other hand, you’re practically Our Lady of Perpetual Virtue compared to me.”

Kim pursed her mouth to one side. “You don’t even know me.”

“Yeah, well, I know Chuck. I know he’s a good judge of people. And I know what he says about you.”

“What,” Kim said, “really?”

“Yeah,” Jimmy said. “You’re the best in your year, and if my stupid mouth drives you out of this law firm, he’ll personally string me up, skin me alive, and wear my balls as a bolo tie at his next trial. Or - you know, something to that effect, he’s not exactly one for colorful metaphor.”

“Well I can’t really picture Chuck in a bolo tie anyway, so I’ll take that as an exaggeration,” said Kim. “But - he really did say-”

“Best in your year, hand to God,” Jimmy said. “So please, no impromptu jaunts to Mexico. I like my balls where they are, thank you very much.”

“Okay, well, thanks. I feel better,” Kim said, and it was true. She sucked the last of her drink through her straws and set it back down.

“One more?” Jimmy offered.

“Nope,” Kim said. “I’ve learned my lesson, I stop at one tonight.” She stood, gathered her bag, smoothed her hair. “But, thanks. Really. I appreciate it.”

“I could walk you home,” Jimmy said, and when Kim’s expression darkened, he put his hands up. “Just - walk you home. We walk, you get home, I leave. That’s all.”

“You’re pushing your luck, Agent Steele,” Kim said, trying to suppress a smile. “But then again you always were… dangerous.”

Jimmy raised his hand, pointed his finger gun-style. “Pew,” he said.

The night was warm for New Mexico in October and clear, and they walked slowly, mostly because Kim’s feet were beginning to ache in her very intimidating heels.

“Okay,” she said, as they rounded a corner two blocks from her place. “But seriously, you have to teach me that swivel chair move, that was slick as shit.”

“What? No! Do you know how many years it took me to perfect that? How many times I wiped out before I had it nailed?” He scoffed, mock-offended. “And you bat your pretty eyes at me and just expect me to reveal all my secrets? No way. I don’t break that easy. That move is _mine_. I’m gonna patent it sometime.”

“Copyright,” Kim said automatically.

Jimmy made a face at her. “Patent.”

“Uh, no, copyright,” she said. “Who’s studied IP law, raise your hands?” She raised hers, and was treated to a mock-glare from Jimmy. “Copyright’s a stretch anyway, maybe you could argue trade secret?” She scrunched her face, thinking. “Yeah, I think trade secret. Though you need to establish independent economic benefit if you want trade secret protection - maybe you could go sniff out some rich widows, get them to compensate you for your strenuous efforts on their behalf.”

“That is an idea,” Jimmy said, nodding contemplatively. “I’ve been doing it wrong the whole time, instead of hanging out in bars I should have been going to bingo halls dressed as Matlock. This time next month I’ll be rolling in cash, aging pussy, and intellectual property. All thanks to you.”

“Best lawyer ever,” Kim agreed. They stopped, a few feet from Kim’s lobby door. “Well,” Kim said. “Thanks again. This was… y’know, fun.”

“Yeah,” Jimmy said, “it was.”

“Okay,” Kim said, “well, good night.”

“Oh - hey, ah-” Jimmy started. “Listen, you’ve sort of put a damper on my Albuquerque social life so, maybe next time I’m in town and I have to get out of the house… whattaya say, I’ll give you a call?”

Kim considered this, and said “well… sure. Yeah, that’s fine. Here.” She handed Jimmy her cell phone, taking his as he proffered it, and they both stood for a moment, plugging in their phone numbers.

“Okay,” said Jimmy, taking his cell phone back and pocketing it. “Good night Kim. And see you around.”

“Yeah,” Kim said. “Good night, Jimmy.” She turned, walked into the lobby, waved hello to the doorwoman, and was in the elevator without looking back. Still, she found herself leaning against the back wall of the elevator car, watching the slow progress to the third floor, wondering why Chuck’s pronouncement that she was the best in her year seemed minor when compared to Jimmy saying she had pretty eyes.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay! We're officially in AU territory in this story, so I hope you won't mind that I'm continuing with this story as I originally envisioned it, with both Kim and Jimmy coming into HHM and meeting each other in a different way than in the show.
> 
> Anyway, thank you to everyone for reading, and to everyone who commented, it really makes my day to know folks are enjoying this story. (Especially now that we need a fix since the season has completed.)
> 
> And before I forget, a warning that I'm spoiling the end of The Philadelphia Story.

Kim picked up the glasses and carried them into the living room. Jimmy was still on the sofa, but leaning back and staring at the ceiling with a glazed look. She bent over him, peering into his face. “Are you gonna pass out on me?”

Jimmy jerked a bit, then batted the air in front of his face. “I’m fine,” he said, “just… tired.”

“Need some food?” she asked. This would probably be a challenge, as she subsisted mostly on takeout, Lean Cuisines if she was desperate, and she hasn't been shopping in weeks. She thought at the moment that her freezer contained about five assorted bread heels - all of them freezerburned - and that her refrigerator held a decaying head of broccoli bought in a moment of misguided optimism and a dozen eggs that had expired about a week ago.

Fortunately - or possibly unfortunately - Jimmy just looked slightly disgusted at the mention of food, so she dropped the subject. “Here,” she said, holding out one of the glasses. Jimmy took it, looked at it as though she’d just handed him a glass of freshly squeezed squid ink, then looked up at her.

“Well, you brought it, we might as well drink it,” Kim said, throwing herself back on the sofa, sitting cross-legged and leaning against one of the arms.

Jimmy shrugged, and held his glass out to her. “To failure,” he said.

“Hear, hear,” Kim concurred, clinked her glass on his, and took a sip. It honestly didn’t taste that bad. Jimmy didn’t drink, just held the glass to his forehead and closed his eyes.

“So,” Kim said, just to fill the silence, “I guess there’s no point asking about the-”

“Don’t say it,” Jimmy said.

“Rhymes with ‘shmob shmearch,'" Kim concluded.

“You said it.”

“I didn’t say it, I rhymed it.”

“Oh yeah, we’ve got Emily Dickinson right here, folks.”

“Not enough hyphens,” Kim shot back. “I thought you said the public defender position-”

“Rejection letter in the mail, soon as I got back from Denver. Perfect end to a perfect day. Not even an interview. ‘Thank you Mr. McGill, but we are currently seeking candidates with between one and three years of litigation experience.’ Didn’t even try to say the position had been filled. They could at least have the decency to buy me dinner first if they’re going to fuck me like that.”

“Well,” Kim said, “to be fair, public defense work is incredibly demanding - huge caseloads, multiple trials going on at once, and the court is under an incredibly tight budget-” She cut herself off as Jimmy turned slightly and gave her a filthy look. “I’m not saying you wouldn’t be good at the job!” she said. “I think you would, you’d be better at it than me. I’m just saying that courts have a huge amount of work and not a lot of money. It’s in their interest to hold out and hire lawyers with more experience than you. That’s it.”

Jimmy did not look cheered up by Kim’s explanation, but he closed his eyes again, shoulders slumping.

“Sorry,” Kim said. “I should have said ‘that sucks, they’re idiot assholes and you could do their job in your sleep. And ball-gagged.”

“Now you’re just flirting with me,” Jimmy said.

“You caught me,” Kim said. “You’re gonna find something,” she added, trying for conciliatory but, in her mind, sounding patronizing instead.

“From your mouth,” Jimmy said. Kim watched as he pressed his lips tight, trying not to ask. In the end, he asked. “Could you-”

“No,” Kim said quickly. “We’re only hiring partners with substantial books this year, anyway.” She cut her eyes down to her thumbnail scraping her glass, hoping he wouldn’t catch her doing it, but not able to lie while looking at him. When she was able to look up again, she was relieved to find his eyes were still closed. Anyway, she reasoned to herself, it wasn’t really a lie. Hamlin McGill wouldn’t touch Jimmy to hand him a rejection letter - even with one of the co-founders for a brother. And Jimmy knew it.

“Just thought I’d ask,” he said, shrugging. “Squeaky wheel. And there's always the off chance Howard gets a brain tumor and loses his short term memory. That happens, you tell him I’m Clarence Darrow. Wait - _not_ the Orson Welles fatty version though.”

“What, you think Spencer Tracy is an improvement?”

“I mean the one where Paul Newman played Clarence Darrow.”

“I don’t think Paul Newman ever played-”

“Well, Howard doesn’t know that, does he? He’s got a brain tumor.”

“Oh, right, of course,” Kim said smiling, and Jimmy finally looked over and smiled back.

“Okay,” he said, “officially done with the pity party. Promise.”

“Well that makes one of us,” said Kim.

“Oh, is it my turn now?” Jimmy asked. “Okay. Howard’s an idiot and an asshole, and you could do his job in your sleep-”

“And ball-gagged,” Kim finished.

“Now I would never say anything so filthy-”

“Oh _please_ ,” Kim said, uncrossing her legs and kicking Jimmy in the thigh.

“Hey, watch it, the knees,” he said, batting her foot away. Kim tucked her own knees under her chin, hugging them to her chest. "Still," Jimmy said after a moment's silence, "pretty young, isn't it? For you to make partner at Hamlin?"

"To make partner anywhere," Kim admitted. "Though I think that was what Chuck liked about it."

"Mm. True. He was using the term 'exemplary' a lot, wanted to show everyone that when you do the hard work, you get the big rewards, 'sthat about right?"

"Something like that," Kim said, feeling a little queasy. "Anyway, it's fine. Howard just decided I should be on a more traditional track. I'm okay with that." She leaned her cheek on her knees, staring at the far wall, hating the lies as they came out of her mouth, unable to stop them. "Just a little disappointed," she added, if only to inject a bit of truth into the conversation. "I'll get over it."

Jimmy gave one closed-mouth laugh. "Life sucks now, it can only get better," he said, and tossed back his drink at one go.

"I guess," Kim said, though she wouldn't have said

* * *

Kim wouldn't have said that her life became either better or worse once she became friends with Jimmy McGill, but she did find that it had more bright pops of color in it. And as the gloss wore off her new career and she settled into the real tedium of legal practice, those pops of color became important. Her life was a grind of office and courtroom hours, studded with the highs and lows of victory and defeat, of irritating or enjoyable clients, exciting new cases or tedious ones that seemed to drag themselves through month after month without ending. Work was in great supply, and fun had to be scraped whenever she could take it, hoarded carefully and doled out drop by drop. But whenever her telephone buzzed, and she heard Jimmy's voice at the other end of the line, she knew that something fun - or at least interesting - would happen to her in short order.

He'd show up in Albuquerque every few weeks. Sometimes he'd come into the office, and she could hear him almost as soon as he came through the entrance, flirting with Brenda and all of the office assistants - all of whom he knew by name. He always went to Chuck’s office first, but at some point afterwards she’d look up from her desk and see him leaning against her doorframe. “So,” he’d say, “What are we doing today?”

Usually it was just food - that was what she had time for, anyway. Lunch at a close-by cafe, or dinner whenever she got out of work, if it was a reasonable hour. Coffee if she couldn’t do either. And they would talk - well, Jimmy would talk nonstop if she’d let him - but she also found herself telling Jimmy things she would never have told her co-workers. She told him about her habit of watching late night infomercials when she got home from work and couldn’t sleep, her fascination with books about mountain climbing - even though she’d never so much as climbed a rock - and the merits of Kurt Russell over any action star in the history of cinema, ever and forever, amen.

Jimmy would tell her funny - no, hilarious really - stories of growing up in Illinois, punctuated by the odd narrative featuring Chuck, who seemed to have come out of the womb prepared to be a litigation partner. One of the best of these was one featuring Chuck’s attempts to lobby their parents for a dog, which culminated in Jimmy’s stealing an easel and giant paper pad from his grammar school art class so that Chuck could put on an entire presentation about the merits of dog ownership. “Oh my god,” Kim moaned upon hearing this, “it’s PowerPoint before there was PowerPoint, this is my nightmare.”

She nearly spat out her iced tea when Jimmy culminated by clapping his hands together, then bringing them apart, palms out. “And that was how we got a hamster. I named him Snoopy.”

She noticed, vaguely, that the timeline of such stories only extended to his brief attempt at a college education, and picked up again with his move out west and his attempts to hold down a job in Phoenix, in Reno, in Santa Fe, in Provo. (“Did you know I make an excellent Mormon? The secret is all in the menswear. Skinny ties and short sleeves, it’s basically camouflage. And, you know, the Brigham Young co-eds are actually - ow, could you please not do that in heels at least?”) But even though she noticed, she never asked about those intervening years. And he, she noticed, never asked her how many siblings she had, or what her parents were like, or why she didn’t tell any stories about growing up. And this put her at ease with Jimmy in a way she didn’t feel with - well, anyone, really.

Once she got a call from him at four in the afternoon. “Hey. Get out of work in an hour and meet me out front.”

“What-” she started.

“Don’t ask questions,” Jimmy said, and hung up.

She did a bit of schedule rearranging, but was out the door at five, jogging down the front steps to the Hamlin McGill building as Jimmy pulled up. In those days he was driving an ancient VW Rabbit with rust spots, and wine-colored vinyl seats that would give you a second degree burn if you touched them with bare skin after a day in the New Mexico sun. She slid into the front seat and gave Jimmy an expectant look. “Okay,” she said, “what-” but stopped when he held up one hand with two pieces of paper in it. Two tickets, she realized, to a double feature at a cineplex in Santa Fe - _Big Trouble in Little China_ and _Escape from New York_. She stared at Jimmy, mouth open, before she turned to face the windshield and put her left hand up, palm out. She grinned at the crack as his palm met hers, and actually started laughing as he peeled out of the lot.

The movies were amazing, of course, but what Kim remembered most about that evening was the drive back to Albuquerque - the near-empty highway, the rough vibration of the diesel engine, kicking off her shoes, sitting with her feet propped on the passenger side window, lighting a cigarette and watching the smoke curl tendrils into the black.

When Jimmy turned and plucked the cigarette from her mouth, and dragged on it himself, she looked over, nonplussed. “If you want one just ask,” she said.

“Naah,” said Jimmy. “I don’t smoke.” He leaned away to exhale out the window, one bluish stream, quickly dissolving into nothing. “Disgusting habit.” He reached back, placing the cigarette back in her mouth. Kim smiled around it, and settled into her seat, half closing her eyes, and feeling sublimely content.

And, Kim thought, she might have stayed content if life had gone on like this indefinitely. But it didn’t.

 

Kim’s first complication was the pro bono litigation she was put onto in her second year of practice, a habeas proceeding before the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit in Denver. It was a huge case, involving grueling research, late night drafting, constant travel. To make matters worse, all of this was on top of her billable work, making each day a scramble to juggle her to-do list, and each weekend a desperate race to catch up with everything that had to fall by the wayside. It felt as though she'd fall into bed every night, then roll over to smack the alarm before she even had time to close her eyes. She watched as her weekly hours crept from the sixties to the seventies and into the eighties, and her only solace was that everyone else on the case was working just as hard. Devaj Gupta, one of her fellow second-years, dove into the case with a ferocity that first astonished, then impressed Kim.

"I just feel like this is really what it's about," Devaj said, when Kim commented about him being so gung-ho on the case, "you know, helping people who need it the most but who can afford it least?" He gave a self-conscious shrug, as though he'd rehearsed this line but only now had deemed it pretentious. "Like, I got an offer from Nichols and Baker?"

Kim raised her eyebrows at this. "Wow," she said.

Devaj shrugged again, ducking his head a bit, but looked pleased. "Yeah. I turned them down though, because HHM has the better pro bono program. Mandatory service hours for associates, huge charitable policies... they have that program putting indigent students through law school, even. I mean, they really give back.  I admire that, like, ethos."

Kim nodded, though her neck felt tight. "Oh, totally," she said. "Well. I should get going. That motion isn't going to draft itself!" Her voice sounded shrill in her ears, and her smile felt forced, but Devaj didn't seem offended.

"Sure," he said, "see you."

Kim walked back to her office, forcing herself to walk at a normal pace. When she got in, she closed the door behind her and took three deep breaths. Then she opened her eyes, swallowed and got herself to work.

All of this work, of course, put a screeching halt on anything resembling a social life for Kim. Most of this, she didn't mind. Her handful of law school friends had followed their job offers out of town - California, mostly - and were just as busy as she was. She got e-mails from them from time to time asking how she was, telling her about their new firms, saying how busy they were. And she'd reply that New Mexico was pretty much the same as ever, and she was fine, and how busy she was. All of them began to sound the same after a few months, she stopped responding as frequently, and the trickle of e-mails began to diminish. Kim wondered if she was being a bad friend sometimes - late at night with sleep elusive and Billy Mays shouting something frenetic on the television at the lowest volume - but she didn't have much time to fret. There was work to be done, and she was going to do it. That was all.

The one person she found that she missed, though, was Jimmy. He'd still show up at the office from time to time, but she was always too busy to get away. After about the fourth time, he got the point, and took to bringing Kim cups of coffee at her desk instead of trying to lure her to a cafe. If she could, she'd go to the parking garage for a cigarette and five minutes' worth of conversation, which was about all she could carve out of her day. This, she found, was not at all satisfying. It was tiny slivers of time, fingernail parings, measured with the speed of smoldering paper. When she caught herself sipping at her cigarette instead of dragging, trying to make it last a few seconds longer, she decided that something was going to have to change, but couldn't quite decide what.

The answer came to her a few days later, and it was so absurdly simple that she actually got angry with herself for not thinking of it before. _Just call him, already. Christ_.

So she called him when she got out of work that night, stepping out into the parking garage, holding her phone to her ear with one hand and flicking at her lighter with the other. It was twenty past twelve, but he picked up on the first ring.

"Hey."

"Hey."

"What's up?"

"Eh. Not much. Just getting out of work, thought I'd say hi."

“Kind of late to be getting out of work, huh?”

“Actually, for me, this is early, so.”

“Oh, well, in that case.” A pause. “Hi, Kim.”

“Hi, Jimmy.”

She wondered whether he was going to tell her that it was late, he was going to sleep. But he didn’t. There was a sound like he was shifting, and then he said “tell me something good that happened to you today.”

“Um, okay,” Kim said, crushing the butt of her cigarette under one shoe. “We got our scheduling order for our habeas hearing today. Three days in Denver in May.”

“Not a bad time to be in Denver, all things considered.”

“Oh. Yeah. The scenic interior of the 10th circuit Court of Appeals all day, every day. And let’s not forget the majesty of the Marriott business center by night.” She swung herself into her car and slammed the door.

“The best of America,” Jimmy said, “lucky lady.”

“Yeah, I know you’re jealous of my glamorous life."

"Too right," Jimmy said. Then, "working you kind of hard though, huh?"

Kim started her car. "No harder than anyone else. I mean, we're all working hard."

"Yeah? Well answer me this - who walked out to your car with you?"

Kim scoffed a little as she steered out of the garage and onto the road. "That doesn't mean anything."

"Oh yeah? Someone was at the office still when you left?"

"I-" Kim started, then stopped. "I don't know," she admitted. "I mean, there could have been."

"You'll forgive me if that sounds a little far-fetched."

"Well, whatever," Kim said. "What about you, what good thing happened to you today?"

"Hm," Jimmy chuckled. "I didn't get fired."

"Ooh, high standards."

"Well, considering I _almost_ got fired, it was a pretty big accomplishment."

"Okay, what did you do?" Kim asked in mock-admonishment.

A sigh on the other end of the line. "What do I ever do? I mouthed off. New supervisor is like nineteen-"

"I bet he's not nineteen," Kim said.

"Who's telling this epic story of heartbreak and woe here? If I say he's nineteen, he's nineteen."

"Okay, he's nineteen, so what happened?"

"He's trying to, you know, assert his authority in front of the warehouse guys - big guys, been doing this forever and they don't take shit. Anyway, this big order comes in. Last minute, huge client, but like, not a realistic scenario for production. So this kid, he’s  trying to play hardass even though he’s been with us for maybe a month, saying ‘I need this ten minutes ago,’ like he’s trying to be Gordon Gekko with them. And it’s just not happening, I mean, we’re working the order as fast as we can, all he’s doing is pacing and trying to look like he’s important and just getting in the way.”

“What did you do,” said Kim, wearily.

“By the fiftieth time he’s telling us that we’re not moving fast enough we’re all so sick of it that when he next opens his mouth I just yell 'next time the kid opens his mouth someone do him a favor and stick his dick in it, he’ll thank you.' The warehouse guys just about shit themselves laughing, and the kid's face turns... puce, I wanna say puce."

"Not exactly the attitude to show your management," Kim said. "They get you for sexual harassment?"

"Nah, and I'm lucky they didn't," said Jimmy. "Insubordination. They docked all my overtime. But, y'know, not fired. Yet, anyway."

“Jesus,” Kim said, “next time just give him a wedgie and have done with it.”

“Now _that_ would be a bold career move. Demonstrates my potential for a career in lower middle management. Or who knows, maybe I could shoot for _upper_ lower middle management, live the dream”

“Flying too close to the sun there, McGill,” Kim said. “But seriously though, if your job sucks this bad, you should quit.”

“Oh, excellent option. I’m sure I could at least steal a nice cardboard box to live in before I walk. It’ll be a cozy place to starve.”

Kim gave an amused huff. “Come on, that’s not what I meant. You need to find something that suits you, something you want to do.”

“Oh, just like that,” Jimmy said.

“Well, I didn’t say it was easy,” Kim replied, “it’s work, it takes time. But it’s better than just sitting in a dead end job until you piss your boss off enough that you get fired.”

“Hm. Well,” Jimmy said, sounding unconvinced, “since you’re acting as my career counselor now, let me ask you something.”

“Um, okay,” Kim said.

“You like being a lawyer, it interests you, you enjoy it, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Kim said, “I love it.”

“So when did you figure out you wanted to be a lawyer?”

“Well, um. When I was I think nine? Yeah. Nine.”

“What made you decide?”

“Uh.” Kim had reached her parking spot at her apartment building, and cut the engine.

“What, were you one of those kids, read _To Kill a Mockingbird_ and decided they were gonna-”

“ _Ew_ , no, I’m not a monster,” protested Kim.

“So tell me, what was it?” Jimmy asked. When Kim didn’t answer, he said “c’mon. You can tell me.” A pause. “Please.”

Kim let out a breath through her teeth and unbuckled her seatbelt, but didn’t open her car door. “Well,” she said, “okay. If it stays between us.”

“My lips are sealed.”

“Promise? Not even Chuck, okay?”

“Yeah, of course not. I promise.”

“Okay,” Kim said, and took a deep breath. “When I was in the fourth grade, there was this girl in my class who was really nice to me. And she’d let me come over and play at her house sometimes after school. And y’know, her house was, like, the best. She had her own room, own bathroom. And she had the best snacks, everything brand label. Real Oreos, real Fruit Roll-Ups. The cereal with the marshmallows that had the cartoons on the box. Nothing from bulk bins, like _ever_. And the best toys, like all her Barbies still had their actual outfits, and their shoes, even. And everything neat. But the thing I remember most about it, that house, was how it smelled. It was like…” she trailed off, trying to find the words to describe it, but failing. “I guess it was like, clean, but not like you could smell the cleaning products clean? Like it was a fact that this house was always clean and you could just smell it in, you know, the air. But it was more than just clean it was… it smelled _rich_. It smelled like rich-person-house. Do you know what I mean?”

Jimmy didn’t answer right away, but finally said “yeah, I think I do.”

“Well, her dad was a lawyer. So that was when I decided, that’s what I was gonna be. A lawyer. Because I wanted to have my own house, one that smelled like - just like that.”

Silence on the other end of the line. Kim could feel the heat from her face and she pressed one palm to her cheek.

“Anyway, turns out I like being a lawyer, I like the work. So, I mean, I was lucky that way. Even if it started out pretty shallow.”

Kim heard Jimmy inhale one quick breath. “I don’t - think that’s shallow,” he said.

“Well. Thanks. I guess.”

“Hm. Ah, you know, Chuck was one of them,” Jimmy said.

“What?”

“One of those kids, read _To Kill a Mockingbird_ and decided-”

“Ew, _gross_!” she protested, but realized that she was smiling.

“Yeah, real crusader for justice, Chuck. Could never get him to invest in seersucker though. I mean, you’d think in New Mexico heat, he’d be all over it. Maybe a straw boater, complete the picture?”

Kim was snickering at the mental image. “Sounds very dapper. You should get one too.”

“Now _that_ is a good job idea, put together a brother act and go into vaudeville. I always liked those movies when I was a kid, _Easter Parade_ and _Singin’ in the Rain_ and _All That Jazz_ \- showbiz movies, y’know?”

“Sure,” said Kim, although she’d only ever heard of _Singin’ in the Rain_ , and had never actually seen it. “Sounds like a solid career plan.”

“Yeah, just one problem.”

“What?”

“Can’t dance for shit. Bad knees.”

“Mm,” said Kim. “Another dream deferred.”

“A true American tragedy.”

“Well. I just got home so I think it’s time for me to call it a night.” Kim got out of her car, aware of how loud the smack of the door closing was in the stillness of one in the morning.

“Okay.” A pause, and then Jimmy said “hey, before you go?”

“Hm?” said Kim.

“Tell me something good that happened to you today that wasn’t work.”

Kim stopped walking halfway across the parking lot, feeling a little startled. Had _anything_ happened to her today that wasn’t work?

“Can’t think of anything, can you?” Jimmy sounded smug.

“Shut up, I’ll think of something,” she said, resuming her walk. But all she could think of was her shower and coffee in the morning, and even then, she’d been planning her to-do this for the day, so that didn’t even really count.

“I’m waitin-ng,” Jimmy Teased, and Kim rolled her eyes.

“Fine,” she said, putting her hand on the bar of her lobby door but not opening it. “One thing.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I talked to you.”

A pause, and then a snort. “Man. You have _got_ to get out more.”

“Mm,” Kim replied. “Good _night_ Jimmy.”

“Good night, Kim.”

 

After that first phone call, it became something off habit for Kim to talk to Jimmy after getting off work. Not every day, but once or twice a week. It didn't occur to her to wonder, until a few weeks had gone by, that she felt no anxiety about these calls. There was no waiting by the phone or surreptitious glancing, just the sense of "oh, good," when it buzzed and Jimmy's name appeared in the little window. If she was too busy when he called, she just said "hey, not a good time, try me tomorrow?" with no fear of reprisal, just the certainty of a cheerful "sure!" at the other end of the line. And if she wanted to talk to him but he hadn't called, she just called him without stopping to wonder whether she was going to annoy him.

For Kim, who had never had a relationship - friendly, romantic or otherwise - in which she hadn't worried that she was being too demanding or too distant, too clingy or too cold, this made her pause once she'd thought about it. She tried to consider what was different, what had changed to make all of this feel so easy. In the end, she'd decided that this was a waste of effort. _This is just how normal people feel when they have friends_ , she thought, and resolved not to think about it further.

The pro bono case barreled on, and Kim found herself bogged in hearing prep, buried in mountains of paper and boxes full of evidence that had to be transported to Denver. Kim and Devaj began comparing paper cuts over takeout in one of the east wing conference rooms that had been converted into their "war room."

"This one is the mother of them all," Devaj announced one night, showing Kim the pad of one thumb. "Manila folder. Went through me like a knife."

Kim looked at the layer of flesh parting from itself like an opening mouth and grimaced. "That's pretty bad," she said, "but check this out." She held out her index finger, pointing to a series of cuts by the second knuckle, one of which was still seeping blood.  "That's five. All in the same place over two days. The last one I thought I was gonna scream loud enough for them to hear me in the partner meeting."

"Yikes," Devaj said. "You get the purple heart. Here." He used his pair of chopsticks to transfer a chicken-tapioca dumpling - one of Kim's favorites - from his plate to hers.

Kim was slightly puzzled by this, but gave him a smile and a "thank you," before popping it into her mouth.

May brought the hearing, a three day whirl in which Kim felt she didn’t even sleep. As the younger associates on the trial team, she and Devaj were sent racing with boxes and roller bags of material from the hotel business center to the court, waiting for the doors to open and setting up binders of evidence for Francis Burgess, the partner managing the case, to have at his fingertips. Comparatively speaking, attending the hearing was a more relaxing experience, though when Francis embarked on an argument that Kim had written for him - going through the points almost word for word - she was so nervous that she began to shake, crossing her arms and clenching her elbows in her hands, trying to hold herself together. Devaj, sitting next to her, reached over and put his hand on hers, pressing it for a moment. “It’s good,” he hissed, “don’t worry.”

Kim’s jaw was clenched too tightly to speak, but she gave Devaj a grateful smile before turning back to watch Francis.

When the hearing was over they went through it all again in reverse, scrambling to pack boxes with the material that had been scattered over the course of three days and getting them into the van that would take them back to Albuquerque. When Devaj gave a yelp and dropped a box, Kim put her own down and ran back. “You okay?”

“Ugh - yeah, shit,” he said, holding up his hand. The index finger nail had ripped into the bed, and a drop of blood was running down to the knuckle.

“Oooh,” Kim said.

“Yeah,” said Devaj, grimacing. “People always say ‘I broke a nail’ like it’s shallow but-”

“No, that shit hurts,” Kim agreed. “Let’s get you a bandage, huh?”

“Oh,” Devaj said, looking embarrassed, “I can do it.”

“Fine, I’ve got your box, though,” Kim said, hoisting it herself. “And you get the purple heart for the day. I’ll get you a drink at the airport.”

“It’s eight in the morning,” Devaj said as Kim walked to the van.

“It’s airport time!” Kim called over her shoulder. “It doesn’t count!”

After the hearing, they were plunged into briefing, drafting their case argument to file with the court. Kim lived at her desk for three weeks, first drafting, then revising, then cite checking, then doing it all over again for the reply. On the last night, she pulled an all-nighter, tweaking each of the citations until her eyes felt like craters in her head. When Francis finished reviewing and declared it good, he sent it back to Kim to file.

Out of all the things in the world, what Kim hated most was filing a brief. The court website was creaky, the e-filing system brand new and a little buggy. Going through the steps, picking out the categories was maddening, but the worst part was how clear her brain felt, how she could pinpoint every tiny thing they had gotten wrong, but was too late to fix. And when the time came for her to click “submit,” she was convinced that the brief was so hopeless, they’d be better served begging for the mercy of the court and asking for an extension than filing the piece of trash they’d just cobbled together. But instead of doing that, she clicked send, watched the upload bar fill, and the certificate of successful filing appear on the screen. “Okay,” she said, “we’re filed.”

Cheers erupted around her from the rest of the staff working the case, all of whom had been watching, and all of whom she had blocked out in concentration. Someone started clapping, and then a lot of someones were, until Kim slumped on the desk head in hand, laughing with relief that it was all finally over. They decamped to the east wing conference room where someone brought out a bottle of wine and a sleeve of plastic cups, and everyone seemed to forget their fatigue as they chatted animatedly about anything except the case they’d just finished.

“Hey, Devaj said, coming up behind Kim with the last of the bottle in his hand. “Refill?”

“Oh, thanks,” Kim said holding out her glass.

“Listen,” Devaj said as he put the bottle down on the table, “do you maybe want to get dinner sometime?”

Kim widened her eyes. “What - like a date?”

“Well, yeah, I thought-” Devaj said, then stopped, seeming to consider her. “No,” he said, “I don’t want to take you out.”

“Uh.” Kim said, frowning.

“Come over to my place,” he said. “I want to cook for you. Saturday?”

Kim had frozen, mouth half-open. “Wow,” she finally said. “That is a bold gambit, counselor.”

“Is… that a yes?” Devaj was smiling, but nervous.

Kim considered, sucking her lower lip into her mouth. “Well… okay. Yes.”

Devaj grinned and ducked his head. “All right! Saturday, seven o’clock. Come hungry.”

Devaj, as it turned out, was an excellent cook, although most of what he made her was unrecognizable for Kim. Still, she had learned at an early age that what separated sophisticates from rubes was a willingness to eat any food set in front of them, so she dug in with enthusiasm, and wasn’t disappointed. “Mm - what is this?”

“Okra,” Devaj said. “My mom’s recipe.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever had okra, it’s amazing.”

“Yeah? Usually people don’t like it, but if you get it young and cook it right, it doesn’t go slimy like some people think it does.”

“Well I really like it,” Kim said, and the way Devaj smiled at her, she decided she’d give him a shot at breakfast. Much to her satisfaction, he earned it.

It was a little odd, dating someone that you worked with, even when their big case together had just finished. Kim went back to criminal work and Devaj back to civil, so they didn’t have to work work together much. Still, the fact that they sometimes had to kiss good bye and wish each other a good day in the parking garage, then go up the same elevator into the same office felt strange to Kim. _Worth it, though_ , she decided, and it largely was. Still, there were things about dating that she had trouble getting used to.

The first time she brought Devaj to her apartment, for example, felt like a whole new sort of trial to Kim. She'd never had anyone over to her place before, largely because she'd never _had_ a place of her own before. Dorms didn't count - you could blame university housing or a roommate for any defect. But when it was your own place that you furnished yourself, took care of yourself, and lived in by yourself, you were the one on the hook for any perceived flaws.

She spent the day cleaning. It wasn't as though Kim was messy - she was religious about scrubbing everything that could be scrubbed at least once every week. But she was sometimes untidy. Coffee cups tended to multiply in the sink, books scattered on her coffee table and bed stand without her realizing. So she scrambled to get everything into place with surfaces empty and gleaming, spending so long arranging and re-arranging her possessions, she felt she barely had time to shower before Devaj showed up with a bottle of wine.

"I like your place!" he said, and a weight seemed to lift from Kim's chest. "But," he said almost immediately after, Kim whipping around with the wine in her fist, trying to find whatever flaw he'd honed in on. "Is that Howard?"

"Oh," Kim said, stepping toward the picture on her end table. She was so used to it, she'd forgotten it was there.

"Is this you?" Devaj said, picking the picture up. Kim winced, her hand outstretched as though she could take the photo back by reaching out to it.

"It's - it's a shitty picture of me," she said, and this was true. There she was, slope-shouldered from stooping to disguise her height, her hair mousy and frizzy because she couldn't then afford a hairdresser who could lift it to her current blonde and define her curls. She was wearing a suit, but the blazer was too bulky and the pants too tight. Her smile was dim - she'd never needed braces, thank God, she'd always had good teeth - but she hadn't yet had them whitened. But there she was, smiling and shaking the hand of the immaculate Howard Hamlin, resplendent in coordinating shades of blue, looking like the Adonis of the boardroom and the eighteenth hole combined.

"Kimberly Wexler, recipient of the Hamlin, Hamlin McGill merit scholarship," Devaj read. And then, with dawning comprehension, "wait - _you_ got that scholarship for our year?"

"Yeah," Kim said, voice clipped. "Why?"

"Oh - I dunno," Devaj said, looking up at her with something akin to alarm in his expression. "I just wouldn't have thought that _you_ -"

"Good," Kim cut him off, noticing that she'd done it a little too forcefully from the look on Devaj's face. She thought about apologizing, then thought better of it. "Here," she said, reaching out for the photo. "It's a shitty picture of me."

Devaj relinquished the frame, and Kim placed it, face down, on top of her bookshelf. She waited, as she reached up to slide the thing a little further, for Devaj to ask the next obvious question - why a picture of herself and Howard was the only picture in her apartment - but he didn't. She turned back to him with a smile. "Want to open this up?

Dinner went reasonably well after that, despite Devaj's incredulity that Kim's idea of dinner at home was delivery Thai food instead of cooking.

“Trust me, you don’t want me to cook,” Kim said. “Not unless you want scrambled eggs on toast for dinner, which is basically my only specialty.”

"I'll teach you," he offered, "It's not hard."

"Sure, sometime," Kim demurred.

The rest of the night, as far as Kim was concerned, was very satisfactory, and she was almost prepared to chalk the whole experience up as a net positive, until the phone rang at one in the morning.

Kim fought her way out of a tangle of bed sheets and Devaj extremities, wondering at first why her alarm was going off if it was still so dark. Then she saw her clock, which read one-seventeen. She snatched up the phone, not even bothering to check the name on the window, because there was only one person who'd be calling her at this time of night. Praying that she'd got to it before Devaj woke up, Kim hit the "ignore" button on the phone, then started texting.

_sry cant talk. tomm?_

_yeah. im in town, lunch?_

_ok BYE NOW_

_byee_

Kim put the phone on vibrate and wrapped it in a discarded t-shirt to prevent further interruption, but when she turned back to bed, Devaj was awake and watching her.

"What was that?" he asked.

"Just a friend. I forgot to put the phone on silent, sorry." She got back into bed, pulling the covers to her chin.

"Calling at one in the morning?" Devaj's voice sounded less sleepy and more suspicious, and Kim's stomach churned.

"Yeah. We're both up late so we sometimes call each other if we can't sleep. No big deal. Sorry it woke you up."

There was a moment of uncertainty before Devaj settled back in, and Kim let out a surreptitious sigh through her teeth. Just like Jimmy to make things difficult.

 

When she and Jimmy sat down for lunch at Loyola's the next day, he gave her a measured look, then cocked one eyebrow up. Kim looked away, wondering what on earth she ought to say. Some guys got touchy about boyfriend-type stuff, she knew this from experience.

Apparently Kim's silence gave Jimmy all the answer he needed. "Nice!" he said, then raised his hand toward her. She high-fived him with as much relief as triumph over a successful conquest. "Good guy?" he asked.

"Yeah, good guy. Boyfriend material, I think.”

Jimmy raised his eyebrows, clearly impressed. “Hm. So, uh, what constitutes boyfriend material for Kim Wexler? Just - out of curiosity.”

“Hmm,” Kim said, lifting her eyes to the ceiling and raising her hands to tick off her fingers. “Well, he’s smart, he’s funny, he’s good-looking… he’s sweet, generous… he can cook-”

“Trying to lure you in with domesticity, I see. What’s the plan, land a hot lawyer wife, become a househusband-”

“He’s not a househusband, he’s a lawyer,” Kim protested. “He’s with HHM - Devaj Gupta in civil litigation, you’ve probably met him, I think he did a case with Chuck last year.”

“O-oh,” Jimmy said. “So, dipping your pen in the company ink, then.”

“Now _that’s_ an attractive phrase,” Kim said with a grimace.

“What, you don’t think dating at work is ever gonna cause problems?”

“Well, I mean sure, in some cases,” Kim admitted, “but sometimes you just have to take the risk. And I think I want to see where this one goes. Like I said, he’s a good guy.”

“Well.” said Jimmy, “in that case, mazel tov.”

“That’s better,” said Kim.

And as weeks and then months went by, Kim felt justified in taking the risk with Devaj. He wasn’t just boyfriend material, he was a good boyfriend, for all the reasons Kim had listed. Even so, there were things about Devaj that Kim found difficult, and to compensate, she tried to make herself easy.

Devaj loved to jog, so Kim bought a pair of running shoes and puffed gamely along beside him, trying to pretend not to notice the dragging feeling her lungs made after she’d gone about a hundred feet or so, or the way Devaj always seemed to have to slow his pace to let her keep up with him.

Devaj did not love Kim’s smoking habit, so she quit cold turkey after they’d been dating for a month. After two weeks of white-knuckling her way through her days assisted by what seemed like vats of coffee, Devaj rolled over in bed and murmured “mm. Your hair doesn’t smell like smoke any more.” Kim dug her fingers into the comforter and ground her teeth, wide awake. She didn’t even have the comfort of her infomercials to lull her to sleep - Devaj didn’t see the charm of the incompetent juggling aped by the actors, and he was such a light sleeper that he’d wake up if she even got up to pace.

Devaj loved to cook, so Kim endured his ribbing about her having nothing but butter knives in her silverware drawer. She bought a chef’s knife and tried to learn the difference between a rough chop and a julienne.

“I mean, it just seems like a really big knife to cut tiny peppers,” Kim remarked as she tried to mince a jalapeno.

“It gives you leverage, see?” Devaj said, taking the knife handle and chopping so quickly Kim worried he might take off part of his thumb. “You try it,” he said, handing the knife back. Kim frowned, and started in on another pepper, not daring to go much faster than a careful slice every few seconds. Devaj finished curbing his eggplant before she'd finished the peppers, so he took the knife and chopped the rest of them himself.

Devaj did not love Kim’s almost single-minded devotion to work. “This weekend, again?” he asked, when Kim told him she’d need to go into the office. “I thought you said it was a slower week.”

“Yeah, but I mean, there’s still some stuff I need to get done, so I thought I’d-”

“I was hoping we’d go hiking, actually,” Devaj said. “Can’t you at least get some time off on Sunday morning? We could go out before sunrise, you’d get into the office by eleven at the latest.”

“Yeah, no,” Kim said, “I really need to get in on Sunday morning, sorry.”

Devaj loved his family, so Kim went to visit them with him for labor day weekend. His family was big and boisterous, and very close. Devaj was the oldest of four, the rest girls. Devaj, his parents and his sisters all cooed over Kim, not letting her wash so much as a water glass or set silverware for dinner. The enforced idleness set Kim on edge, and only exacerbated her feeling that the household was not quite real.

The Guptas seemed like a family on television, the ones in the comedy shows with big houses and problems that only lasted a half an hour and could be solved with a group hug. She found herself watching them in throat-tightening awe, marvelling at their easy smiles, the way they sprawled on the furniture, threw back their heads and laughed at inside jokes. Lying awake at night - Kim had her own tiny guest room, as the house rule was that bedrooms could not be shared unless the couple was married (and Devaj didn’t even argue about this, or try to sneak into her room at three in the morning, as she expected him to) - Kim wondered whether all of this was a show put on for her benefit.

In the morning, she’d started to descend the stairs to the kitchen, but stopped halfway down upon hearing Devaj and his mother talking - saying her name, actually. She sat on the stairs, straining her ears, knowing she shouldn’t but not able to help it.

“-sure you’re happy?” Mrs. Gupta was saying.

“ _Mom_ jeez. Yes,” Devaj said. “She’s great, really.”

“But sweetheart, she’s so quiet. I don’t think she’s said two sentences put together since she’s been here.”

“It’s her first time meeting everyone, of course she’s going to be quiet,” Devaj protested.

“But we can’t get to know her if she doesn’t talk!”

Kim hopped up the stairs on tiptoe as fast as she could and shut herself in the guest room. She dumped her suitcase out, folded everything and put it back in, then dumped it out again, folded everything, and put it back in before zipping it up and going back down. By this time Devaj’s sisters were in the kitchen, and the conversation had turned to something else.

On the drive back to Albuquerque, Kim asked “how did I do?”

“Fine! You did fine,” Devaj replied. “Perfect. They loved you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, of course they did. Listen, do you want to come over once we’re home?” He put his hand on her thigh. “I missed you all weekend.”

“Yeah, me too,” Kim said. “But uh, you know, I think I might be coming down with something? Sore throat? I might just head home and get some rest, see if I can get better for work tomorrow.”

Kim waited until Devaj had pulled out of the parking lot, then went straight to her own car, shoving her suitcase in the back seat rather than going up to her apartment. She drove straight to the nearest CVS, bought a pack of cigarettes, and had one, leaning against the wall at the back of the building by the dumpster so her car wouldn’t smell like smoke.

When Devaj inevitably asked Kim whether she'd ever introduce him to her family, she said "no," so bluntly that she hoped he would get the picture and not ask again. He didn't get the picture.

"Why?" he asked, incredulous. "Family's important-"

"To some people," Kim responded, keeping her eyes fixed forward.

"To everyone," Devaj insisted. "They're your history, your culture-"

"Maybe I don't like my 'culture,'" Kim snapped back. When Devaj fell silent, she filled it in, saying "look - you're not meeting my family. Ever. You wouldn't like them. And - uh. They wouldn't take kindly to you, either." She had to look him in the face then, to make sure he got her point. To his credit, he got it, and quickly.

"Oh," he said, dropping his eyes. He didn't ask about her family again.

Devaj did not love Jimmy McGill. “Why are you friends with that guy?” he asked once after Jimmy caught them in the HHM lobby on his way to Chuck’s office, and gave them a strident hello. “Don’t you think it’s a little creepy the way he’s always coming around here?”

“He’s visiting his brother,” Kim said.

“In the middle of the day? Why not see him after work?”

Kim, who’d never asked Jimmy a thing about his current relationship with his brother, opened her mouth then closed it, shrugging. “I guess that’s between them.”

“You don’t think he’s weird,” Devaj said, cocking one eyebrow.

“No,” Kim insisted. “He’s a good guy. We’re friends.”

“Good enough friends that he calls you at one in the morning?” Devaj asked, and his tone had turned sour.

“Don’t be a jerk,” Kim snapped. “We’re just friends.”

Devaj dropped it, but after that, Kim stopped telling him when she she was going to have lunch with Jimmy, and made sure her phone was turned off in her handbag if Devaj was staying over.

 

Despite Devaj's difficulties, Kim kept on, reasoning that if she just persevered, maybe the difficult things would smooth out and get easier. After all, the good parts of the relationship were still very good. Even if she was chipping by having a cigarette or two on her weekends at the office or on nights when she was alone at her apartment, even if she never quite felt at ease with his family, even if she never made much progress at cooking beyond the odd stir-fry, even if she snuck out of the office to have lunch with Jimmy without telling Devaj, and even if her running shoes languished in her closet if Devaj wasn’t there to push her out the door in the morning.

Their first and worst fight came after over a year of dating, when Devaj began asking Kim about moving in with him, possibly getting a house together. Kim first deflected, then procrastinated, and finally outright balked at the idea.

“I don’t get it,” Devaj said for the seventh time. “I’m trying to think about our _future_ here, I mean, where do you see this going?”

“I - I don’t-” Kim blustered, then raked her fingers through her hair. “I just like the way things are now, I like being with you, but I like having my own place-”

“Well I _love_ you, I want to get started on a life together, and I think moving in would be a good first step. If you don’t want to be with me-”

“I didn’t say that, this just feels too soon for me.”

“If you’re not sure about being with me, why are you wasting my time?”

The fight lasted for nearly a week, and although Devaj eventually relented and agreed to give Kim time to consider what she wanted to do, the relationship never quite went back to the way it had been. The good times felt a little forced, a little hollow, and the time they spent apart began to increase. Kim was even glad when Devaj told her that he’d been accepted to lead a pro bono workshop at UNM School of Law for the fall semester. Outwardly, she congratulated him for the coup, but inwardly, she was just relieved that his evenings would be busy two nights a week.

And so, she really wasn’t too surprised when Devaj finally broke up with her just before Thanksgiving that year.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “But I can’t keep waiting around for you to make up your mind.”

“Yeah, no, I understand. I’m sorry too,” she’d said, but after he’d left her apartment, she unearthed the hidden pack of cigarettes that she’d hidden behind her copy of _The Big Sleep_ on her bookshelf, went outside, and chain-smoked three just because she could.

Still, she wasn’t happy about the breakup. Her life, which had hitherto had more substance than she felt she could handle, suddenly seemed to empty out. The flesh and meat seemed to slough off of it, until only the bones remained.  Anything significant that happened to her usually came with an _I have to tell Devaj_ , but now, she realized, she couldn’t any more. There were no default dinner plans, no one to wake her up on the weekends and suggest something interesting to do - even if it was hiking. She felt thinned out - both figuratively and literally, as she'd started forgetting to eat without Devaj asking her over for dinner Even Billy Mays on the television late at night wasn’t much comfort.

She thought about calling Jimmy and telling him about it, but somehow didn’t want to. She’d remembered his admonishment about - what had he called it - dipping her pen in the company ink? She didn’t want to hear him laugh at her, to say _I told you so_. She didn’t want to have to tell him that now, when she saw Devaj in the hall, both of them flicked their eyes to opposite walls and kept them there until they’d passed each other. So, she just didn't call Jimmy for a while, and when he called her, she kept the conversation as light as possible. She waited for him to ask her why she wasn't calling, but he never did.

It was Madison who ended up giving Kim the news about Devaj, two weeks before Christmas. Kim and Madison were on a nodding acquaintance, but as Madison had gone into the trusts and estates practice group, they didn't have much occasion to chat. So, when Madison showed up outside the door of her office, Kim was a little startled. "Hey," she said.

" _Hi_ Kim," Madison said, in a cringey sort of way. "Do you have a sec?"

"Sure, come in," Kim said."Listen, I was so sorry to hear about you and Devaj - you guys made _such_ a cute couple," Madison started. Kim was sure she hadn't come just to say that, so she waited for whatever it was that was coming. "Anyway," Madison continued, "I was having lunch with Ronald? And he told me that Lila told him that Devaj told her that he was bringing his new girlfriend to the holiday party?"

Relief washed over Kim. Was that all? "Oh, that's great," she said. "Good for him. Really."

Madison gave her a simpering look that Kim did not like at all. "You're so nice, Kim. But the thing is - and I just thought someone should tell you so you don't get surprised?" she squirmed a bit, took a breath, and came out with it all at once. "She's a 3L at UNM - from his pro bono workshop. And I guess they've been seeing each other for a while - like, _secretly_."

Kim was stunned. "What, you mean like since Thanksgiving?"

"More like... Halloween?" Madison said, cringing again.

Kim set her mouth. "Oh."

"I'm _so_ sorry," Madison said. "I mean, we're not trying to get him in trouble or anything - I just thought you should know so you don't get blindsided if someone says something at the party."

"Well. Thanks," Kim replied, her voice sounding distant in her own ears.

"You poor thing," Madison said, though Kim suspected she was disappointed that she hadn't gotten a more dramatic reaction out of Kim. "Here," she said, hoisting her handbag - new bag, still Prada, still rattly. "Do you want a Xanax?"

Kim blinked at her in sudden disbelief. "Uh. No. Thanks, though."

Once Madison left, Kim sat at her desk and tried to figure out what to do.

Dating a student - that was an ethical breach, certainly. Should she report him? To whom, Howard and Chuck? Or to the UNM law department? She balked at the thought. After all, it wasn't actually illegal. It's not as though a 3L was going to be underage, after all, and Devaj wasn't a full time professor, not even an adjunct - just an independent contractor. We're the rules different for contractors?

She found herself opening her web browser so she could check the state laws, then forced herself to close it again. What was the point? She wasn't going to report him - not to the school, and not to the firm. It felt too vindictive, too - well - bitchy. Even if he had maybe been a little dishonest-

 _No, cheating_ , she thought. _What he was doing was cheating_. She wondered why this didn't make her feel more angry than it did. Reporting him wasn't the answer, and anyway, if he were stupid enough to take her to a holiday party - the firm holiday party no less - he didn't need any help getting caught.

What, then? Talk to him? Tell him that this was a terrible idea? But why the hell should she? He was a lawyer, he knew the kind of trouble he could get into. _He's made his decision, now let him face the consequences._ It certainly wasn't her job to save his ass - he was the one who'd dumped her.

And there came the anger, fresh and hot and roiling. _I went to meet his family, I slept in that stuffy little guest room, followed their rules, listened to his mother talk about me behind my back, and now I'm supposed to snatch his ass out of the fire he lit? Fuck no._

Ignore it, then. Look and act like she was two thousand feet above it all, like she didn't even care. This, at last, was appealing - and gave her some plausible deniability should Devaj's proverbial shit happen to come into contact with a cosmic fan. _I had no idea, Howard, I'm just as shocked as you are. Yes, I thought better of him, too._ She snickered - not like Howard would actually come to her about this, but it didn't hurt to be prepared.

Ignoring Devaj at work would be relatively easy, but then there was the Christmas party to contend with. Kim thought about it for some time, then opened her web browser. After a few searches, she jotted a list on one of her notepads, tore out the sheet of paper, and shoved it into her handbag. On Saturday, she took herself shopping.

Over her years in law school and then at HHM, Kim had developed what she thought of as a uniform. Pencil skirts or suit trousers, button down or plain blouse, suit blazer. Sometimes a plain suit dress, with the skirt to the knee. Aside from wearing jeans on weekends, she never deviated from this uniform - not so much because she didn't like fashion, but because she was a little afraid of it. She could never quite tell, no matter how long she spent squinting at Vogue or Harper's, what was fashionable and what was just garish. She still cringed to remember that at the age of nine, she thought her thirteen year old cousin Junie to be the utter height of fashion, with her waterfall bangs, plastic jelly shoes and frosted blue eyeshadow, with the fuchsia lipstick that only highlighted the flakes of dry skin threatening to dislodge themselves with every crack of Junie's chewing gum.

 _I thought that was what lipstick was supposed to look like - god help me_ , she thought with a rueful smile. _And then that time I asked Junie if I could try on her lipstick, and she-_

A car horn sounded, startling her, and she slammed her brakes. She'd almost plowed through a red light, but had stopped just after her front tires had crossed the line. She sat there, panting, watching the cars cross perpendicular in front of her.

_You don't have to think about Junie - remember? Three deep breaths._

She took her deep breaths, and when the light turned green again, she was calm enough to drive on.

Kim had gotten the idea for a work uniform from Howard, actually. When she'd gone through the incredibly rigorous series of interviews required for her scholarship, he'd made a point of attending a few, just showing up at the beginning to shake her hand and wish her luck. And she'd noticed that he'd worn the same suit each time - or so she’d thought.

The more she saw him, however, the more Kim realized that Howard didn't just wear the same suit, in the way Bart Simpson had a closet full of red t-shirts and blue shorts. Rather, he had a set of beautifully tailored, very similar suits of different fabrics and weights, maybe slightly altered cuts, but always classic - suits that could be worn for years without looking dated. But the real genius of it was that every shirt Howard owned, every tie, every shoe - hell, every sock - could be worn with each of his suits without looking out of place. He could pull items at random from his wardrobe, put them on in a pitch black room, and emerge looking more than immaculate - he would look like _Howard_.

Once she'd figured this out, Kim had begun to buy her clothes in the same way, as much as she could manage. And, she found, it was liberating. Kim no longer had to agonize each morning about whether a shirt or skirt was good enough or looked too cheap, or was the wrong shade of muted grey to go with a blazer. Now, everything fit, and fit together. Even at parties, she wore her uniform - the suit dresses doubling as plain cocktail dresses with the right necklace or pair of earrings. It also had the benefit of being frugal, allowing her to sock her money into a savings account so that she could save up for a down payment on a house.

Yes, Kim's rules for clothes had served her very well over the years. And today, she was going to break them.

When she walked into the boutique and a gimlet-eyed saleswoman, coiffed and lipsticked, approached Kim and asked how she could help her, Kim fought hard against her natural inclination to hunch her shoulders and scurry away, muttering that she was just looking. That wasn't the way she acted at work, so she pretended to be back at HHM. "Yes," she said, "I'm looking for a cocktail dress."

It took Kim an hour of rejecting the saleswoman' suggestions of purple ("an elegant statement!") and red ("so festive for this time of year!") before she found it - a slim, ice-gray sheath of matte silk that felt like a splash of water as the skirt settled around her knees.

The saleswoman clucked disapproval. "Oh, no, sweetheart," she said, prompting Kim to wonder how they had gotten to the "sweetheart" point in their relationship. "Not with your coloring - it washes you out."

"I know," Kim said. "It's perfect." Between her pale skin, light hair and gray dress, she thought she looked like a statue, carved out of a single block of stone. And statues didn't care if their boyfriends cheated on them and left them for their law students. "I'll take it," she said, without even looking at the price tag.

Kim tried the dress on again as soon as she got home, half terrified that the shopping-based adrenaline rush had clouded her judgement, that somehow her owning the dress would diminish it, make it somehow less beautiful. But, to her astonishment and relief, it didn't. The dress was still perfect - more than perfect - to look like she didn't care.

 _Well, okay. Now how about_ acting _like you don't care?_

That was going to be the difficult part. Last year before the holiday party, she'd admitted to Devaj how nervous she got at events like these - the ones that were all about enforced fun. How much she dreaded what she'd always thought of as the small talk triple crown.

"Well, it's not the Triple Crown, is it?” Devaj had said. “The horses go around the track once - well three times technically, once for each race, and the Triple Crown's over. This never stops - you go around and around like..."

"Like NASCAR?" Kim suggested.

Devaj had given her an odd look and said "sure." Still, he'd made a point of sticking to her side at the party that year, bringing her into conversations when she would otherwise have faded into the background. She'd been so grateful to him for doing that - and now it stung to think how much she'd relied on him. And now, what was she going to do - go to the party alone and hover around conversations like a ghost?

She knew who she needed to call before she even finished the thought. She hesitated for a few minutes, not feeling ready to admit the truth to him for fear of the inevitable "I-told-you-so." but practical considerations won out, as they tended to do, so she shimmied out of her dress and hit her speed dial.

"Heyy,” said Jimmy.

"Hey, how's it going?"

"Can't complain." A pause. "Been a while, huh?"

It had been about a week since they'd spoken, and nearly a month since Kim had called Jimmy instead of letting him call her. "Yeah," she said, "sorry. Things’ve been a little..." she let herself trail off, then decided she didn't want to finish the sentence. "So I have kind of a weird question for you. What are you doing, week of Christmas?"

"Try not to get too jealous?"

"Well, I'll try to try."

"Hm. Chuck McGill and Jimmy McGill, two brothers who happen to be single and are extremely attractive-"

"Goes without saying," Kim said.

"Well, _obviously_. These two international playboys of the jet-set scene will be winging their way to exotic Cicero, Illinois."

"Ooh, fancy," Kim said. "And what thrilling adventures will you be getting up to in Cicero?"

"Well, there's the fun of discovering just how charred a roast beast can get before it becomes completely indigestible... the annual count of how many rusty nails Dad can put away before he falls asleep in a pile of potatoes... and the ever-popular 'why can't Jimmy get his life together like big brother Chuck.'"

"Sounds amazing."

"Thrill-a-minute."

"So, you said you're flying out with Chuck right? So you'll be in town?"

"Yeah, coming in Tuesday, we leave on Christmas Eve. Why? You want to stow away in my suitcase, experience your first Illinois winter? It's like getting groped by a Yeti."

"As delightful as that sounds, I think I'll pass. Actually... I was wondering if you wanted to go to a party with me."

Another pause. "You wouldn't happen to be referring to the HHM holiday _fête_ , would you?"

"The very same."

“And, uh… you’re implying that the smart, funny and good looking Mr. Devaj won’t be escorting you?”

Kim sighed, holding the speaker of the phone away from her mouth so Jimmy wouldn’t hear. “Well, no, considering he dumped me last month.”

“Uh, _excuse_ me?” Jimmy said, and the entire story spilled out of Kim in one rush - the fight, the breakup, Madison’s news about the as-yet-unnamed 3L. “So, I guess I thought I’d ask you to come, because-” Kim started, stopping when she realized it sounded like she was only asking Jimmy to go as a tactic. “I mean, I _want_ you to come, but-”

“Say no more, I see your plan,” Jimmy said.

“Really?”

“Oh yeah. Show up your ex by inviting someone who’s prettier than his date. Excellent strategy.”

“You’ve got me,” Kim said, grinning her relief. “And really, who else could I call?”

“Flattery is going to get you everywhere,” Jimmy responded, then said “Chuck is gonna hate this.”

“What?” Kim said, flustered. “Is that a problem?”

“Oh - nah, he knows we’re friends.”

“What, you talk about me?”

“Only good stuff, promise. You’re still the best in your year.” He stopped, then snickered. “I’m gonna tell him you begged me, you know.”

“Ugh. Fine. If that’s the price I have to pay. I’ll pick you up at seven, okay? I’m driving. You’re at Chuck’s?”

“Yep, I’ll be there.”

“Great,” said Kim, and when this seemed too perfunctory, she added “and really - thank you. It means a lot.”

“Oh - hey, my pleasure. I don’t get asked to fancy Christmas parties very often, you know.”

“None of us do,” Kim said. “See you.”

That taken care of, Kim felt better for an entire week before a sense of creeping dread began to nibble at the edges of her brain. She caught herself whispering “It’s fine, it’s fine, it’ll be okay,” to herself as she stared at a case on Westlaw, or at a blinking cursor as she stalled out on a draft. By the day of the party her shoulders and jaw ached from clenching them, and she cut out early to go home and get ready, her gnawing sense of guilt for leaving work a distant second to the oncoming rush of anxiety. She had to re-do her eye makeup three times after flubbing the eyeliner, and her hair refused to cooperate with any style she tried. In the end, she left it down, thinking she couldn’t do any worse by leaving it to its own devices.

When she pulled up to Chuck’s house, she took a moment, admiring his house in the glow of the setting sun. It was really nice, she thought, on a quiet leafy street, surrounded by pristine green lawn. She thought it must smell amazing in there, like books and furniture polish and wool. She got so lost in the thought - and trying to figure out whether the shadow in the window was really a grand piano - that when Jimmy burst out of the front door and jogged down the steps, she was a little startled.

“Thought that was you,” Jimmy said as he swung himself into the passenger seat. “Should’ve honked.” He grinned at her. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself,” Kim said. “What is that, new suit?”

“Oh, you noticed,” Jimmy said.

“I like it,” said Kim. “Double breasted - very nineteen-forties.”

“I was trying for a kind of Cary Grant _His Girl Friday_ kind of thing - does it work?”

“You clean up okay,” Kim said, pulling into the street. "Cary Grant might be pushing it."

"What, you don't think I can pull off Cary Grant?"

"I was thinking more like Jimmy Stewart, didn't he wear a double breasted suit in, like, Vertigo or one of those?" Jimmy made a face at Kim, and she laughed. "Don't turn your nose up at Jimmy Stewart, okay? I had the biggest crush on him when I was ten and saw _Mr. Smith Goes to Washington_. You know, the filibuster part when he’s been talking for twenty-four hours, and his voice is gone, and his hair does that thing?” She flapped her hand toward her own forehead as a vague illustration of the thing. “Very big deal to tiny Kim, Jimmy Stewart.”

“Okay, but filibuster aside, Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart went head-to-head in _The Philadelphia Story_ , you see that one? And who gets the girl in the end, hm?”

“Uh, excuse me, are you referring to Katherine Hepburn, queen of Hollywood, as ‘the girl?’”

“Fine, but my point is, at the end of the movie, who does she get married to?”

Kim sighed, flopping her hand in defeat, and said “Cary Grant.”

“Cary _Grant_ ,” Jimmy repeated. “Clearly a superior human.”

“If you say so,"Kim said, deciding not to add that she'd always found Cary Grant to be a little too smug about his ineffable Cary Grant-ness to be very appealing. Still, she had to admit, the argument had put the prospect of the party entirely out of her head once again, and for that she was grateful.

The party was held at Howard's favorite restaurant, as it was every year. Kim suspected that Howard liked it, not because of the food - it had the dubious distinction of being a seafood restaurant in the middle of a desert - but because they treated Howard as though he was a sort of minor deity. He only had to step through the door to find at least four servers scraping and bowing and suggesting the latest Riesling. All of this made Kim uncomfortable in a way she couldn't articulate, but she had to admit that it was very useful when it came to impressing potential clients.

All of this felt very abstract to Kim, up until the moment she shrugged off her coat to give to the smiling, uniformed man who was checking it. The man's eyebrows lifted just the tiniest fraction as he took in her dress, and Kim, who was tuned to register even the most minute criticism of her person, felt her nerves give a dangerous twang. She whipped her head to look around the room, and realized that she had made a terrible decision in choosing her dress. All of the female lawyers in the room were wearing simple wool suit dresses, and all of the wives and girlfriends were in muted maroons and greens, with tasteful little bolero jackets, their hair done up in twists. Kim felt not just underdressed, but exposed, as though she'd peeled back her own skin in a misguided effort to be festive.

Her feeling was only magnified when she caught sight of Devaj, who was in a knot of conversation that included Lila and Ronald. The woman next to him was startlingly pretty - short, with long, straight dark hair, in a severely plain suit dress. Kim wondered if it was too late to slink out and pretend she had the stomach flu.

"Well," came Jimmy's voice behind her. "Pretty swank set-up, huh?"

"I guess," Kim said, though Jimmy was right. The entire restaurant had been booked for the occasion, and it had been transformed by moving all of the tables to the periphery of the room. There were no fewer than four open bar stations - and that wasn't counting the actual bar itself. But the real centerpiece was the raw bar in the middle of the room - all glittering ice, and the pink and orange and butter-white of incredibly expensive seafood. Still, even with the surrounding opulence to distract her, Kim's eyes strayed to Devaj, who now had his arm around his date's waist.

"Ah," Jimmy said, evidently following Kim's gaze. "That guy bothering you?"

"Maybe a little," Kim admitted.

"I could have his kneecaps broken if you wanted. See, 'cause I know a guy who knows a guy... who knows another guy-"

" _No_ ," Kim said, nudging Jimmy in the ribs with her elbow. "You are _not_ here to threaten physical violence on my ex."

"Oh?" said Jimmy, cocking one eyebrow, "then what am I here for?"

Kim took in a breath, and squared her shoulders. It was time to go in there - dress or no dress. "You are here," she said, "to show me a good time. So, you know. Get cracking."

Jimmy gave her an appraising look, the held out his arm to her. She took it, and the two of them walked together into the room.

 

The good thing about Jimmy, Kim decided, was that he was loquacious enough that once he started talking, as long as you were the one standing next to him, no one noticed that you didn’t have anything to say. He really did know all of the assistants by name, and remembered little details about their lives, too - Ramon’s kids’ names, what a jerk Janine’s ex was, the breed of Paula’s dog, the name of Ernie's prog rock band - stuff that Kim hadn’t ever bothered to learn, much less remember. But she was tugged along as Jimmy made the rounds from person to person - mingling, she supposed, though Kim sometimes thought there was no uglier word in the English language than “mingling.”

With the lawyers, Jimmy wasn’t quite as successful. The younger ones, sure, Jimmy had Ronald calling him “bro” within about two minutes, but when they moved to say hello to Francis Burgess, he gave a stiff nod to Jimmy, and Kim had to swoop in with shop talk so he didn’t turn and walk off. After that, Kim and Jimmy started, almost unconsciously, to tag-team. Jimmy took the forefront with anyone remotely gregarious, while Kim chatted sedately with the more straight-laced partners, each of them taking a turn at whatever passed for standing behind the other and looking pretty. By the time they made it around the room to Howard, Kim had forgotten about Devaj and her dress, and was starting to have a pleasant evening.

"Well!" Howard said. "Don't you look lovely tonight, Kim. And Jimmy! This is a surprise."

"Jimmy was nice enough to accept my invitation," Kim said quickly, lest Howard think he was gate-crashing.

"It's my pleasure," Jimmy said, "always nice to actually be invited into the rarefied company of HHM."

Kim thought she saw Howard's smile tighten slightly, but it could have been her imagination.

"Have either of you seen Chuck?" Howard asked.

"Oh - I thought I saw him," Kim said, which was true. She'd thought she'd had a glimpse of Chuck from time to time, chatting with a group of partners or ordering a drink, but he'd always seemed to be on the opposite side of the room from her, and had disappeared into the mix before she could get a sense of where he was headed.

"Ah," Howard said. "Excuse me, I should say hello to Winnifred - you two have a nice time, very glad to see you both." He moved off toward the raw bar, leaving Kim a little nonplussed.

"Should we go say hi to Chuck?" she asked Jimmy, but Jimmy didn't seem to hear her.

"How 'bout a drink?" he said.

“Definitely,” said Kim, and followed him to the bar, where he handed her the one glass of prosecco she was allowing herself as designated driver for the evening.

They settled at a close-by standing table, Kim leaning her elbows against it to take the weight off her heels.

“How’s that good time coming?” Jimmy asked, placing his bourbon and ice next to her champagne flute.

“Not bad,” Kim admitted, “but can we take a break from the mingling part of the night?”

“Sure,” Jimmy said. “This is officially the drinking in corners part of the night.”

“Also trash talking about the people we just sucked up to,” Kim said, leaning into Jimmy conspiratorially. “Did you think Howard was acting kind of - oh _shit!_ ” She turned sharply, hiding half her face behind her hand.

“What?” Jimmy asked, craning over her for a glimpse at whatever it was she’d seen.

“No, don’t look, don’t _look_ ,” Kim hissed, batting at his arm.

Jimmy ducked, elbows on the table, lowering his voice. “Okay, but what?”

“It’s _her_ ,” Kim said miserably. She turned, peering through her fingers toward the bar where Devaj’s date was standing, close enough that Kim could hear her ordering a cosmopolitan and a gin and tonic. “Does she look like she jogs?” Kim asked. “Like, _willingly_ jogs? No, don’t _look_.”

“Just - just-” Jimmy said, waving his hand at her, then leaning out very slightly to look without drawing much notice. Kim glanced back too, relieved to see that the woman’s back was to them as she waited for the bartender to finish her drink order. He seemed slightly baffled by the construction of a cosmopolitan, particularly whether it took a lime or a lemon. Kim looked back to Jimmy, who was staring at the woman, his eyes narrowing and crinkling a bit at the corners. His tongue darted out of his mouth once, very quickly, before he cut his eyes back to Kim. “You said she’s at UNM?”

“Yeah, a 3L, why-” she started, but cut herself off as she saw the corners of Jimmy’s mouth begin to slowly turn up. “Jimmy?”

“Watch this,” he said, straightening, and to Kim’s horror, he picked up his drink and walked straight towards Devaj’s date.

“Jimmy _no_ ,” Kim hissed, shooting an arm out to try to catch his sleeve. She only managed to scrape her fingernails against the fabric before he was out of reach. She clenched her other hand around her champagne flute, trying to decide - run out to the parking lot, get into the car, and not stop until she hit the border, or follow?

“God _damn_ it,” she muttered under her breath, and followed.

“Excuse me!” Jimmy was saying. “I don’t think we’ve been introduced yet - James McGill.”

Devaj’s date had turned now, so that Kim could see her face clearly as it lit up at the sound of the name “McGill.”

“Hello, it’s _so_ nice to meet you Mr. McGill,” she said. “I’m Bea.”

They shook hands just as Kim reached them. “Jimmy,” Kim said warningly, but Jimmy didn’t heed her tone.

“Like she said - call me Jimmy,” Jimmy said.

Bea turned her face to Kim, open, trusting. “So nice to meet you, uh-”

“Kim,” Kim said sharply, and watched in astonishment as her name had no effect on Bea whatsoever. She shook hands with Bea numbly.

“So you’re here with, uh…” Jimmy said.

“Oh, my boyfriend’s an associate at your firm? Devaj Gupta?”

“Right, Devaj, yeah, good guy. Ah-” Jimmy said, pointing at Bea, “ _lucky_ guy, I should say.”

Bea giggled. “Thank you,” she said, “it’s actually a special night - our three month anniversary.”

“Three months?” Kim repeated. She struggled to keep her face still. Three months. Three months meant September. God.

“I know it’s stupid to say ‘three month anniversary,’” Bea said, misinterpreting Kim’s remark. “I’m not sure how else to say it, though - three monthiversary?”

“Mensiversary,” Kim prompted, and Bea giggled again.

“That sounds a little…” she said, and Jimmy burst out with a laugh that Kim was sure only she could tell was fake. She cut her eyes away to avoid looking at either of them, and caught sight of Devaj - his jaw set - striding toward the three of them.

“Jimmy,” she said, teeth clenched, “I think we should-” but she was too late. Devaj was on them, mouth open.

“Hey-y!” Jimmy said, cutting him off with a combination of speed and sheer volume. “Devaj, my man, great to see you! And congratulations on your - what was it, three monthiversary?”

“Mensiversary,” Kim said, and to her satisfaction, Devaj couldn’t quite seem to meet her eyes.

“And you two - how long have you been together?” Bea asked.

Devaj opened his mouth, but Jimmy cut him off again. “Oh _us_ ,” he said, quirking his eyebrows a fraction in Kim’s direction. “Well. Let’s see now, how long has it been, darling?”

Kim opened her mouth, then raised her eyes to the ceiling. “Oh,” she said, “must be about - three and a half years now?” She sighed. “Sweetheart,” she added.

“ _That’s_ my girl,” Jimmy said, and he snaked one arm around her waist. “Talk about a lucky guy, huh? First time we met I just about knocked her out of her chair. What was it you said to me?”

Kim gave him as much of a glare as she dared out of the corner of her eye. “Don’t be a dick,” she said, knocking him once, lightly, on the back of the head with her palm.

“Still a charmer,” Jimmy said, smiling in a way that she thought could only be measured in kilowatts.

“You two are _so_ cute,” Bea said, her eyes fairly swimming.

"How about you two kids?" Jimmy said, directing the question towards Bea, and steering Kim in a slight arc so that Devaj was pushed out of the center of the conversation. "How did you meet?"

"Well, we met through this pro bono program at UNM," Bea said, picking up the cosmopolitan that was finally finished, and looked more or less correctly constructed. Bea's cheeks were flushed very pink, and if Kim were judge of anything, she looked pretty buzzed. Well, she was only a baby, and she would no doubt learn that drinking anything served in a cocktail glass at a work function was inevitably a bad decision. _Hell, this might be the night she learns it_ , Kim thought, and felt inexplicably sorry for Bea.

"Anyway," Bea was continuing, "Devaj is, like, so passionate about pro bono work, and I mean, I am too? So I just had so many questions for him, and I thought he thought that I was this total pest keeping him after class all the time? Until one night, I'm there and he says 'should we finish this conversation over dinner?' And I'm like, ‘oh my god, is this actually happening to me?’ So I said, like, ‘are you asking me out to dinner?’ and he was like ‘no, I don’t want to take you out. Come over to my place, I want to cook for you.’” Bea giggled, blushing even pinker, likely realizing that her story was slightly inappropriate.

"Now _that_ is a great line," Jimmy said, swiveling back towards Devaj. "I'd say I'd steal it, but, you know." He nodded toward Kim. Devaj looked as though he wanted to either punch someone or make a run for it.

Kim decided that she'd had enough of this conversation. It was high time, she thought, for her to have a cigarette and a sulk in the parking lot. She pulled away, thinking for an instant that Jimmy would let her slip out of his arm, but he caught her. He squeezed his hand into her waist, giving her a sidelong glance that clearly said _stick around - I got this_.

Kim considered leaving anyway, but at the last moment thought _statues don't care - remember?_ Instead of fighting Jimmy's grip, she sighed, letting the heave of her ribcage press against Jimmy's palm in silent protest. He squeezed his hand into her again, brushing the pads of his fingers against the thin material of her dress in a way that made her skin prickle - though she wasn't sure why.

"You don't need it any more, right?" Bea was saying, still laughing like she was being naughty, but that it didn't matter. "So what do you think - any advice for us so we can make it three years too?"

“Well, first off I'll say, opinions are like assholes," Jimmy said. "Everyone has one, but nobody necessarily wants to hear them."

Bea giggled again, pressing a hand to her mouth in a way that Kim thought was a bit schoolgirl-ish. "No-oo, I wanna hear it! C'mon, tell us - please?"

"Okay, okay," Jimmy said, “I will tell you - free of charge - relationships are hard work, and things can go south when you least expect them. Now, just as an illustrative example, I know this guy, was with a girl - fantastic girl, talk about gorgeous. And not just gorgeous, she was the whole package. Smart, interesting, funny, ambitious, everything you'd have on the checklist, right? Bu-ut, not enough for this guy, seems like. He picks up a bit on the side. Scumbag move, am I right?” He removed his arm from Kim’s waist, and pointed at Devaj with both hands, turning his head slightly, then spreading his palms. “Right?”

Devaj let out a short sigh, and shook his head. “Right, yeah, I guess.”

"Okay!" Jimmy continued. "So this guy, he's stringing both ladies along a good two months before he finally sees the light and does the right thing and breaks it off with his first girl. Now at this point I would say okay, guy did a rotten thing but now it's over, his loss, right? Wrong. Because he and girl number one _worked_ together. So she gets to hear about it after the fact - from their co-workers, no less, when the guy decides to bring the new girl to the next office party. _Total_ scumbag move, am I right?"

"Totally!" Bea echoed enthusiastically, and both she and Jimmy looked pointedly at Devaj, waiting for him to agree.

"Right," Devaj said, his knuckles going white around his gin and tonic.

“Now, girl number one, she’s keeping her head above it all, goes to the party, keeps her head high, doesn’t make waves. She’s being the bigger person. So imagine her shock when girl number two - who, to her credit has no idea who she is, guy never told her about any of this, understandably - girl number two comes over and spills that not only was guy cheating on girl one for two months, not only did he bring her into their place of business, not only was girl two his _student_ ….” Jimmy gave a dramatic pause here, his hands raised, palm out in front of his chest. “ _But_ ,” he went on, “she finds out that he picked girl two up with the very same line he used on her.” He clapped his hands once. “ _Ultimate_ scumbag move. So the moral of this story is, before you start dating someone, the very, _very_ best thing you can do, is make sure he’s not a scumbag.” He turned to Devaj. “Am I right?”

“Okay, _enough_ ,” Devaj said, his voice not quite rising to the level of a shout, but coming close - close enough that the bartender and a few nearby chatters turned to look at him. “I’m a scumbag - is that what you want to hear?” Devaj said, looking directly at Kim. “It’s not the way I wanted things to happen, and I feel like shit about it, and I’m _sorry_. Is that what you want to hear, Kim?”

“What…?” Bea said, looking from Devaj to Kim, her cosmopolitan frozen halfway to her mouth.

Kim opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She looked from Devaj - furious, to Bea - baffled, and finally to Jimmy, whose mouth was cocked to one side, lips pressed together in a sort of facial shrug. She turned back to Devaj, mouth still open, fully intending to reply to his outburst, but what came out of her mouth was a laugh.

It started out a disbelieving sputter, turned into a chuckle as she tried to breathe in around it, then poured out of her - full-throated, eye-closing, torso-curling laughter. She couldn’t stop, even as she registered that even more people were turning to see what was going on, their conversations dying around her in a widening gyre. She gasped, trying to inhale enough to stop herself, but she was just making choking noises in her throat. Tears were stinging her eyes, and her knees were threatening to buckle with the force of it. She held one hand up, and managed to choke out “I just - I’m just gonna - get some air-”

She groped in front of her with the hand she was holding up, caught Jimmy’s wrist and hauled him along with her as she made her way toward the restaurant entrance - first walking as quickly as she could, then half-jogging, then breaking into a run once they passed the host stand, slamming through the front doors, both of them laughing as they went.

Kim didn’t stop running until she’d made it to her car, stopping herself by slamming her hands against the passenger side window. Her laughter was only little gasps now, and they shook her frame as she opened her clutch bag for her cigarettes. She lit one and dragged on it, finally extinguishing the last of her laughing fit as the smoke curled into her lungs. She held the cigarette out to Jimmy and he took it, while Kim pressed her palms into her forehead.

“I just,” she started, then stopped. “Wow,” she said instead.

“Not bad, right?” said Jimmy, passing the cigarette back.

“What was that for?” she asked.

Jimmy shrugged. “Way I see it, the guy owed you an apology, at least, so….”

“And that was your plan when you went over to talk to her?”

“Plan? No, there wasn’t a _plan_ , I just sort of went with it.”

Kim huffed a little. “You know what you did, right?”

“Hm?” Jimmy said.

“You crossed him.”

“I crossed him? So what, I live in fear of his vengeance, or-”

“No, I mean you cross-examined him. You got him into a corner, made him say what you wanted, give you the answers you wanted him to give. It was… actually, it was pretty impressive.”

“Hm,” Jimmy said. “Maybe I ought to have been the lawyer in the family.”

“Room for more than one lawyer in a family,” Kim said. “It’s a solid career choice, anyway.”  she suddenly snickered. "I would pay to hear the conversation those two are having right now."

"Think she'll dump him?" Jimmy asked, smirking.

Kim thought about it for a moment. "No," she finally said. "Or anyway, I hope not."

"Seriously? Guy cheated on you, you don't think he deserves it?"

Kim shrugged. " I don't know." She dropped her cigarette butt and crushed it with her shoe, then shivered. Her adrenaline had seeped away, and she was suddenly very aware that she was outside with only a thin silk dress between her and the desert winter air.

“You want to go back in?” Jimmy said.

“Absolutely not.” Kim crossed her arms in front of her, hoping to god that her nipples weren’t showing through her dress, and thinking longingly of the coat still safely checked in the restaurant’s closet.

“Cold though, right?” Jimmy said, then without further prompting, took off his suit jacket.

“ _No_ ,” Kim protested, but Jimmy had his jacket off and draped around Kim’s shoulders before she could say anything else. It was huge, and the double breasted cut flopped at her torso, but it was warm from Jimmy having worn it all night, and Kim’s shivering stopped. Jimmy stood in front of her, pulling the lapels together under her chin. They fell away when he let them go, so he picked them up again, pulling the jacket more tightly around her shoulders and holding it there.

"Were you really gonna just stand there and take that?" he asked.

Kim gave an exasperated click of her tongue. "Well, I mean, what else should I have done?"

"He took her into _your_ office party-"

"He works here too, he can bring whoever he wants. I'm glad he apologized, but now I just want to let it go." Jimmy gave her a skeptical look, and she laughed. "Why, what would you do in my situation?"

"Ah," said Jimmy, looking over her shoulder as though suddenly uncomfortable. "Let's just say, not let it go. But now that I think about it, your way's probably better than my way. Very mature."

Kim shrugged against the jacket lining. "I don't know about mature, I just - you know, for a while, I thought he was the guy. But he wasn't the guy. I should have broken it off with him months ago, I just didn't want to admit it." The thought was suddenly depressing, so she dipped her head, staring at Jimmy's tie. It was a burnt orange stripe, really terrible, completely wrong for the suit, which inexplicably cheered her up. She reached one hand through the lapels Jimmy was holding together and tugged on it. "You think Cary Grant would wear something like this?"

"Hey, don't judge. Most of those movies are in black and white anyway, so as far as _you_ know-" He cut off as Kim started laughing again, and grinned down at her. "Feeling better?"

"I think so," Kim said. "I knew there was a reason I brought you."

"You mean besides my stunning good looks and magnetic personality."

"Oh, _right_ , those too," Kim said, feigning surprise and earning herself a mock glare.

"You ought to be nicer to me, I'm the only thing between you and hypothermia right now."

"Yeah, or I could just go back inside."

"You want to go back inside?"

" _No_ ," Kim said, surprising herself with her own vehemence. "Sorry," she said, casting her eyes down. "We can go in a sec, get you another drink. I'm just not ready to go back yet."

"What?" Jimmy said, incredulous. "I don't wanna go back, it sucks in there. I don't know how you put up with it. It's like swimming in a bowl of smug asshole chowder."

"Uch," Kim said, but she was snickering a little. "fine. Then what do you want to do?"

"Honestly?" Jimmy said. He took a breath, and before Kim was entirely aware of what he was doing, he had his hands cupping her chin, and his mouth on hers. This time it was Kim who sucked in her breath in shock - but it was also Kim who opened her mouth first.

Jimmy pulled back abruptly, hands still on Kim’s face, peering down at her, looking about as surprised by this as Kim felt.

“No?” he said, grimacing slightly after several seconds’ worth of Kim staring at him in open-mouthed shock.

“I… just thought you said I was off-limits?” Kim said. Her mouth didn’t seem to work properly, the words coming out as though around a mouthful of something.

Jimmy shrugged. “Yeah, well, I just figured… fuck it,” he said.

Kim nodded slowly, trying to get her brain around the intricate nuances of this argument. “Yeah,” she said, “right. Fuck it.”

Jimmy’s smile barely had time to register with Kim before he had her shoved against her passenger door, and her mind had gone completely and blissfully blank. She forgot that she was angry at Devaj, forgot that she hated office Christmas parties and small talk, forgot that she was outside with no coat in forty-some degree weather and by rights ought to have been shaking with cold. Her entire consciousness had iris-wiped to a handful of sensations - Jimmy hard against her thigh, his mouth moving down her throat, her nails sliding down the back of his dress shirt, and her bafflement that this had never happened before - because all of it didn’t feel good to her, it felt necessary, like the first mouthful of water after forty days in the desert. She wanted to say all of this, but couldn’t. She paused, groped, and found blank space after blank space in place of the words she wanted. She settled for sucking his earlobe into her mouth, watching her breath mist into the air every time she slit her eyes open.

It was a sudden gust of wind that cut into her just as Jimmy hiked her skirt around her hips that sent the world opening up around her. Everything flooded back - office party, law firm, _public parking lot_ \- and she pushed him away.

“Whoa, whoa, hey,” she said, and suddenly she wasn’t just cold, she was freezing, clutching Jimmy’s suit jacket around her shoulders and whipping her head around to make sure there wasn’t anyone there who could see them. Mercifully, the parking lot was empty, but god knew how long it would stay that way. Jimmy, in turn, was looking around as though he’d never seen a parking lot before in his life, and was trying to work out what the purpose of it was.

“We should maybe-” Kim started, trying to get her breathing under control.

“Get out of here?” Jimmy suggested.

“ _Yes_ ,” Kim agreed. “C’mon - coats.”

“Okay, just - walk in front of me a ways, yeah?”

Kim laughed as she picked her way back towards the restaurant, walking slowly until they reached the entrance. “Okay?” she shot behind her shoulder before she opened the door.

“More or less.”

“Here,” she shrugged off Jimmy’s jacket and passed it back to him.

The coat check tickets were in Kim’s clutch, and she passed them to the man behind the counter, trying not to notice that this time, he was definitely staring at her tits. When he finally disappeared into the closet, she stuffed a few dollars into the tip jar against her inclinations, and drummed her fingernails on the counter, mouthing “c’mon, c’mon, c’mon.”

He’d just reappeared, both coats slung over one arm, when a voice sounded from near the host stand. “Jimmy!”

Kim shut her eyes and clenched her teeth, but there was no helping it. The voice was Chuck’s.

“There you are! I’ve been looking everywhere,” Chuck said, in a scolding sort of tone. “You know our flight’s at six, and I want to get to the airport at least two hours in advance.”

Kim turned to Jimmy, who by some minor miracle had gotten himself together enough to be able to put his suit jacket on instead of holding it in front of him. “It’s a domestic flight, Chuck,” he said acidly, “don’t you think two hours is a little bit of overkill?”

“On Christmas Eve?” Chuck admonished. “It’ll be a hellscape. I’m just going to say good-bye to Howard, and then we really need to get going.” He turned, as though seeing Kim for the first time, and gave her a tight smile. “Merry Christmas, Kim,” he said.

“You too, Chuck,” she replied, trying not to let her resentment creep into her voice. It was the ugliest name in the world.

When Chuck disappeared back into the restaurant, Kim half expected Jimmy to grab her and make a break for her car. Instead, he watched Chuck go, his mouth tight, then turned to Kim and said “I’m sorry.”

“Oh,” Kim said, trying to hide her disappointment. “No, it’s okay. Christmas with family is important.”

“I just - I’m in enough trouble with Chuck as it is-”

“I thought you said this wasn’t gonna be a problem,” Kim said.

“I was maybe a little optimistic,” Jimmy said, wincing.

“Oh my god-” Kim started, and Jimmy held his hands up, palms out.

“No, no, no, no, no, it’s not about you, it’s - it’s just between me and him. I’ll talk to him, it’ll be fine, don’t worry about a thing, okay?”

He looked so nakedly pathetic that Kim relented. “Okay, sure. Good luck. It’ll be fine.”

Jimmy lowered his hands, his shoulders relaxing slightly, but staring at her as though just now taking in all that he was giving up. He raked one hand through his hair. “ _Shit._ ”

“Really, it’s okay," Kim said, “you should go - I mean, it’s not like you’re not coming back."

“New Years Eve,” Jimmy said. “I’ll be here by noon, and they’re letting you out early for the holiday anyway.”

“Oh,” Kim said, “they hadn’t announced-”

“Trust me,” Jimmy replied, “I have inside information.”

“Well,” Kim said, “okay, I’ll be here.”

“Promise,” Jimmy replied.

“Promise. I’m not going anywhere.”

Jimmy smiled, a breath of relief bursting through his mouth. “Okay, well. Until then.”

“Yeah,” she said.

Then, unexpectedly, Jimmy grabbed her face between his hands again, and kissed her, close-mouthed and hard enough to make her stumble back. He pulled away, putting his mouth close to her ear. “As god is my witness,” he said, “I will never make you jog.”

“That is the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me,” Kim murmured, and let go of his wrists just in time for Jimmy to straighten before Chuck came back into the restaurant lobby.

Kim watched them both go, then made her own slightly wobbly way out into the parking lot, feeling as though she’d been drinking all day, but knowing full well she had barely had three sips of that prosecco she’d abandoned back inside. Once in her car, she put her key into the ignition and turned it, but didn’t put the car out of park. Instead, she lowered the window and lit a cigarette, leaning her head back on the inhale and closing her eyes enough to make the view out of the windshield blur, and grinning so hard she thought her cheeks would crack.

“Okay,” she said to herself, “okay.” And suddenly, she realized, it was. Life felt as new and clean as the cold wind coming through the window, and she couldn’t wait to find out what was going to happen next.

* * *

Thinking about that night years later, Kim sometimes wondered how different it would have been if she had told Jimmy if this was it - now or never, he’d have to choose between her and - well, and Chuck. What he would have done.

  
She could never stand to think about it for very long.


	3. Chapter 3

Kim swallowed the last of the Freixenet in her glass. Drinking it had been a mistake, she was beginning to realize. She was getting to the point where she felt heavy, and the lines of her thoughts blurred delicately into one another. She ought to get up and fill their glasses with water, but she didn’t want to stand. Not that she couldn’t - it was just that the effort of getting herself vertical seemed a bit too much to deal with at the moment. It would be easier to grab the Freixenet bottle, which was on her coffee table where she’d plunked it after the first time she had to get up for a refill, but she didn’t quite have the energy for that, either.  _ And a mistake, remember? _ They’d emptied about two-thirds of it already.

Instead, she set her glass on the coffee table, stretched her legs out, bumping Jimmy’s leg with her feet. “Sorry,” she said.

“‘S’okay,” Jimmy said. He flopped his head towards her, smiling. “Here.” He scooped both of her ankles in one hand, depositing them so they were resting on his lap. “Okay?”

“Thanks,” Kim said, letting her limbs go limp again. 

Jimmy rested his head on the back of the sofa, eyes half closed, left hand cupping Kim’s right foot, and smiling just the faintest bit.

“You seem like you’re feeling a little better,” Kim said.

“Well, I just gotta keep it all in perspective,” Jimmy said. “Because one of these days, none of this is gonna matter.”

“Yeah?”

“Yep. Because the sun is eventually gonna expand and swallow up the earth, and the human race will finally get put out of its misery.”

“Mm,” said Kim, lifting her left foot and nudging Jimmy’s shoulder with her big toe before setting it back on his lap. “What a healthy attitude.”

“I know, right?” Jimmy said, “I should start a religion.” He leaned forward unexpectedly, grabbed the Freixenet bottle with his right hand, and emptied it into both of their glasses, all the while not letting go of Kim’s foot with his left. He snagged Kim’s glass by the rim and deposited it into her hand.  _ Mistake _ , she thought, but she’d already taken a sip.

“There’s always contracting,” she said. “One of my friends from school, she couldn’t find a job after graduation, ‘cos she got sick and couldn’t do a summer internship. But she signed up with this contracting agency? And after she passed the bar she was placed in a firm for this huge trial where they needed all the help they could get? And she was so good at the work, they ended up hiring her full time. Now she’s partner track.” She shrugged, sloshing the cava in her glass a little too much, but catching it before it spilled.

Jimmy gave her a sidelong glance that seemed suspicious.

“I’m just saying,” she said, “as long as you can get a foot in the door, it doesn’t matter if you have a fancy law degree as long as-”

“As long as you do the work,” Jimmy finished. “I know, I  _ know _ . Chuck keeps telling me. If you do the work-”

“The clients will come, yeah he tells us that too,” Kim said. “But I mean, he’s kind of right, right? I mean, that’s what he did - right?”

Jimmy opened his mouth as though to say something, then closed it rolling his head to rest on the back of the sofa again, eyes to the ceiling. “He told me if the public defender position didn’t work out I should try contracting with the court, build up a reputation and then - pew, magic.” He sloshed his own cup a bit. “Clients flocking. But I don’t - I don’t know.” He grimaced. “Every time Chuck tells me how it was with him, it seems like the clients all came  _ after _ he started the big fancy law firm with the big fancy deep-pocketed co-founder with all the country club connections.” 

This shut Kim up for a minute. All of the arguments she had against Jimmy’s point swirled around her head and fell flat, one by one. Because honestly, she didn’t know much about Chuck’s life before he’d teamed up with Howard’s father and started HHM. And then there was the time Howard had told her-

_ No. No, you don’t have to think about that right now. _

It was almost enough to spoil the moment, her mind brushing up against the thought of that lunch with Howard. She ought to take her feet off of Jimmy’s lap, get up, pour both of them big glasses of ice water, find the goddamn Yellow Pages - I mean, how could she lose a copy of the freaking  _ Yellow Pages _ , the thing was the size of a dictionary - call Jimmy his cab and get some sleep before work. 

She was definitely, absolutely going to get up, but then Jimmy pressed his thumb into the ball of her foot and she found herself giving a contented hum low in her throat, and sinking a little further into the sofa.

Well. Maybe she could give it another few minutes. She had her drink to finish after all.

Jimmy was back to staring at the ceiling. “It could be a way to make ends meet - for now. I guess.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” said Kim, although she realized that for Jimmy, making ends meet was an aspirational goal at the moment. He’d lost his apartment two months ago for being behind on rent, but when she’d expressed her concern, he’d waved it aside, telling her he had something worked out. Of course he’d never told her exactly what that something was, and deflected all of her attempts to find out. All she knew was that he wasn’t staying with Chuck - couldn’t, what with Chuck’s insistence that his home remain EMF-free for the foreseeable future.

_ And one of them would probably kill the other one before very long, _ she admitted to herself, though she couldn’t say which one of them would break first.

“And I mean, maybe Chuck’s right,” she said, more to fill the silence than anything else. “It might end up taking you somewhere interesting.”

Jimmy didn’t respond, but he also didn’t stop rubbing his thumb into the ball of her foot, which meant that she hadn’t offended his honor, at least. He took one long drink from his glass, and finally said “maybe,” which was about all she was going to get out of him on this topic for the night.

Kim smiled, a little exasperated and wondered - not for the first time - what on earth she was going to do with

* * *

 

Kim spent her Christmas day wondering what she was going to do with Jimmy McGill.

The possibilities were pleasant, and a very interesting distraction from her usual Christmas routine.

Last year, she’d gone to visit Devaj’s family. They didn’t celebrate Christmas, but took advantage of the respite from work and school to have a big family dinner, and to descend upon Boxing Day sales. Devaj’s sisters had dragged Kim to a high-end makeup counter where they ran the saleswoman ragged, sterilizing lipstick samples for them to try on.

“Come  _ on _ ,” Reva had said, pulling her to the counter. “You’ve got to get  _ some _ thing, it’s fifty percent off.”

“I got these,” she’d said, holding up a bag containing three blouses that would fit into her work uniform.

Reva had rolled her eyes. “That’s  _ boring _ . This is fun.”

Kim had let Reva and her sisters scrutinize her face with the saleswoman, and the four of them finally decided on a bright petal pink - much brighter than anything Kim would have picked out on her own. Still, she’d bought it, and after Devaj had dutifully told her it was beautiful, she’d worn it for a few dates before shoving it into the back of her drawer in favor of the muted mauves and neutrals she favored for work.

Waking on Christmas morning alone in her apartment, Kim unexpectedly thought of the purchase. Once she had a cup of coffee in hand, she went into her bathroom and rifled through her drawer until she found the lipstick, its slim black case dusted with eyeshadow. She opened it, twisted the base to reveal its bright pink core, and, on a whim, swiped it across her mouth.

_ Kim framed in the oblong mirror with the crack at the bottom, standing on tiptoe so that she could see her mouth reflected with its new color, clutching the plastic tube in her right hand, breathless at her daring. _

_ Even before she saw the bright pop of pink, she knew it would look wrong. She didn’t look like Junie, with her halter tops and crimped hair, with her way of jutting her bony hips so that her jeans slid down. She just looked like Kim, hair stringy and mousy, shoulders hunched and nervous, with the wrong color lips. _

_ She’d wash it off, that was all. She ran the water in the sink, splashed it on her face, started scrubbing with her fingers. But it wouldn’t come off - the cheap, oily lipstick only smeared, and when she looked up in the mirror again, she was aghast to see that she looked like a drunken clown with a streak of fuschia down her chin. _

_ She glanced at the handtowel next to her, but that wasn’t an option - the dainty towels her grandmother hung in what she called the “powder room” were only for best, meaning you weren’t even supposed to use them to dry your hands - you just glanced at them while you wiped them on the seat of your shorts. She wouldn’t have used them anyway. They smelled funny and were beginning to go green along the edges. _

_ She tried scrubbing with her hands again. It was all she could do. The sink began to fill - a bad drain in there, crusted with something black and gritty - and the water turned pink as she dipped her hands, scrubbed, dipped again. _

_ Knocking now. “Just a minute!” Kim said, frantic, desperate enough to scrape her nails down her chin. _

_ “What are you doing in there?” came a dry, sarcastic voice. Junie. Kim’s heart fluttered. She scrubbed harder. _

_ “I said just a minute!” The color was fading, but half her face was still stained pink. _

_ “Did I leave my lipstick in there?” _

_ “Um - I don’t know.” _

_ A disgusted scoff. “You retard. It’s on the sink.” _

_ “Yeah - okay - I’ll bring it out.” _

_ “Well hurry up!” _

_ Water still running, Kim still scrubbing. There was no way she’d get it all off, and now there wasn’t even time to find a fistful of paper towels in the kitchen to scrape across her face. Junie would see and then she’d- _

_ A rattle - the doorknob. “I said just a minute!” Kim said, voice rising to a squeak. _

_ “It doesn’t take that long to wash your hands, spazz,” Junie snapped. “Let me in.” _

_ “I-” Kim sputtered, but Junie had already forced the flimsy lock, and was in. _

_ She took in the scene dispassionately, her jaws working a piece of gum, fuschia-painted lips writhing around it like a pair of worms, eyes half-lidded. Her facial expression did not change as she darted out a hand to grab Kim by her hair and shove her face into the sink. _

_ Kim flailed, snorting water into her nose, limbs catching at air. She twisted her neck, tried to buck her head, but Junie was four years older, and Kim was as yet seven months away from the growth spurt that would take her over five feet. Junie held her down, and Kim stayed down, trying not to breathe in more water as she gagged on what she’d already taken in. The faucet was still on, and sluiced cold water down her neck. _

_ She didn’t know when she stopped struggling, but remembered beginning to feel heavy, unable to even try to lift her head out of the water. She gripped the edges of the sink convulsively, coming to the bright realization that This could be It, whatever It might be. Black stars blinked behind her eyelids. _

_ And then, with one jerk, Junie wrenched Kim’s head out of the sink, leaving Kim to back into the wall, barking with every painful cough. _

_ Junie bent and picked the tube of lipstick off the tile floor. _

_ “Don’t touch my fucking stuff,” she said, and was gone. _

Kim stared at her reflection, the bright lipstick incongruous against the blotches of color on her cheeks, the old acne scars on her chin, the hair hanging limp from an unwashed scalp. “Don’t,” she told herself out loud, then, startled at the sound of her own voice, stopped speaking.  _ Don’t think about that. You don’t have to think about that. _

She twisted the lipstick back into its case, and tossed it into the wastebasket. She felt a small pang of guilt at the waste - even at fifty percent off, it had been quite expensive - but it also felt like a relief to be rid of the stuff. She stepped into the shower and turned her face up toward the stream, letting it wash pink from her face and drip onto her toes. She opened her mouth and let the water fill it until it spilled over her cheeks and chin, holding it there without spitting for as long as she could stand it.

 

Kim didn’t dread Christmas the way she once had years ago, when Christmas was a day to be trapped, her usual escape routes blocked by her handful of friends’ family obligations or vacations. In college and law school, she’d had the opposite problem - shut out of dormitories that closed for the holiday, she had to find a motel that was cheap but not scary-cheap, and figure how to afford both the stay and food on her tiny student job stipend or hourly wage. Now she had her own place, and could do whatever she wanted. And today, what she wanted to do was putter around her apartment and think of what she was going to do with Jimmy McGill.

Really, she decided, as she tidied up a stack of scattered books, there were a lot of possibilities. She’d be disappointed if they made it into her apartment any further than her living room sofa - the first time anyway. She considered the kitchen counter - would the height work? She eyeballed it, deciding it was maybe too high. Shower? She dismissed it - that never really worked outside of movies, in her experience. Bed was obvious of course, but still interesting. In the middle of cleaning she got one very clear picture in her head - Jimmy propped up in her bed on one elbow, his hand on her hip and hair flopped into one eye. This, more than anything graphic she’d thought up over the course of the morning, was overwhelming enough that she had to sit down for a moment, cupping a smile in one palm.

_ Jesus, it’s about time, _ she thought.  _ We’ve known each other three years and now I can’t wait five days. Figures. _

Kim’s thought was interrupted by her phone buzzing with a text. When she picked it up, she was entirely unsurprised that it said  _ merry xmas gorgeous _ .

_ same to you _ , she texted back.  _ get anything good? _

_ red ryder carbine action 200 shot range model air rifle _

Kim rolled her eyes before typing back  _ you’ll shoot yer eye out kid _ .

_ what are you up to _

_ n/m. usual. you? _

_ cousins descending any minute. irish and they breed like it. last count i made was fifteen kids among them and i think that was five years ago. _

_ yikes _

_ nah kids are ok. they’re really gullible. _

_ jesus. be good. i don’t need you coming here with fifteen piggy banks, fugitive from justice. _

_ i told you that was five years ago. i think i could score twenty, twenty five this year. _

_ oh well that’s different. once you get back with the loot we’ll hit the border. _

_ promises promises _ . After a pause, another text.  _ call you later? _

_ sure. any time. _

_ thought about you all morning _

At this, Kim buried her head in one palm, trying not to grin idiotically, and failing.

_ same _ , she texted back, and held her breath.

_ don’t you lie to me _

_ never _ .

_ fff ok cousins here now call you later _

_ ok ill be here _

When she put down her phone, she propped her elbows on her knees and pressed her face into both hands. This was so stupid, this was high school level stupid and she knew it, but she couldn’t seem to help it.  _ Five days, five and a half, that’s it _ , she reminded herself. Fucking Christmas.

When her apartment was as tidy as she thought she could make it, she placed a rather hefty order of Chinese delivery, and pulled a stack of VHS tapes from her closet, ready to begin her Christmas tradition in earnest.

Jimmy called at about ten at night, forcing Kim to hit pause just as the crew of the Nostromo sat down for their last fatal meal with John Hurt. “Hey,” she said.

“Hey-y Kimmy.” 

Kim snorted a little at this.  _ Kimmy? Seriously?  _ “Are you drunk?” she asked.

“ _ No _ -o.”

“Jimmy.”

“A few drinks, that’s it, he said. “It’s Christmas.”

“Yes, that’s true.” She was on her third glass of  Gewürztraminer herself - but then, that was over the course of three and a half hours, and she suspected Jimmy was drinking a bit faster than she was. “How are the cousins?”

“Christ. Feral. I’m hiding out in a boiler room.”

“You are not.”

“Hand to god. I’m wedged between a water heater and a washing machine. Bet you’re regretting not coming out.”

“Still not interested in getting groped by a yeti, but thanks.”

“Missing out. The yeti are an astonishingly sensual species,” said Jimmy, and Kim made the appropriate gagging sounds. “Where are you?” Jimmy said once she’d finished.

“On my sofa. Tonight’s the annual Kim Wexler - Mistress of the Dark - horror movie marathon.”

“Hm,” said Jimmy, sounding impressed. “What’s the lineup?”

“Well, we had  _ Cape Fear _ ,  _ The Thing _ and  _ Alien _ ,” Kim said, ticking off with her fingers, “then for the finale comes my very favorite Christmas movie.”

“Which is?” prompted Jimmy.

“Take a guess,” Kim said, smiling into her receiver. 

“Give me a hint.”

“Okay,” she said. “It’s not exactly a horror movie, but I’m including it because it’s the best Christmas story ever conceived by the mind of man.”

“That’s not a hint.”

“It is for me. Guess.”

“Oo-kay. I’m gonna say… I’m gonna say…” he trailed off, leaving Kim side-eyeing her phone, eyebrows raised. She was just about to ask him if he gave up before she heard him snap his fingers. “ _ Die Hard _ .”

“You know me so well.”

“Well. I mean, greatest story ever told.”

“Yippee kay-yay, motherfucker,” she agreed. “Chinese takeout and a bottle of wine, and Christmas is saved.”

“Well, from here in the boiler room, that sounds like paradise,” Jimmy said.

“You shouldn’t have left,” Kim replied, and was a little surprised to hear Jimmy sigh at this.

“I think I shoudn’t have,” he agreed. "You know why Chuck wanted to get to the airport at four in the morning?"

“Fear of flying?” Kim guessed. “Needs to psych himself into it? Or wait for the Ambien to kick in?”

“You’re too nice to him. There’s a newsstand in terminal B, carries the  _ Financial Times _ . He wanted to get there when it opened, get his copy in time to get to terminal C and read it with his coffee.” Jimmy gave a disgusted sigh. “I thought about killing him. Several times over.”

Kim gave a disbelieving sputter. “Get in line.” She paused, then said “I would have gotten you to the airport on time, you know.”

“I dunno,” Jimmy said, “you would have had to fight me every step of the way, and I’ll have you know, I’m a scrapper.” 

“Hm. I might have let you win.”

“Pushover.”

“Ass.”

Jimmy chuckled at this, the sound loud and warm in her ear, as though he’d pulled the receiver close. A wriggle of anticipation wormed up her stomach, and she tried swallowing hard to tamp it back down. It didn’t quite work, so she decided to try bringing up the least sexy topic she could think of.

“So, what’s Chuck doing?”

Jimmy gave a disgusted scoff at the question. “He and our stepdad are upstairs bonding over - Christ, I don’t even care what.”

“Your stepdad?” Kim asked. “I thought you were at your dad’s house. Do they - I mean, they get along, I guess?”

“Hardly,” Jimmy said, still disgusted. “Mom’s just over because we haven’t been home in a while. The peace treaty’s gonna last maybe another hour, hour and a half tops.”

“Oh,” Kim said, “well should you - I mean, that’s really nice of her.”

“Yeah, well it would be nicer if she left Se ñ or Scumbag at home, but unfortunately…”

“I know the feeling,” Kim said. “Stepdads are the literal worst.” 

“You’re not wrong there, gorgeous,” Jimmy replied, which brought an unexpected smile to Kim’s face. Christ, she was letting herself get warmed up by platitudes. “So tell me if I’d’ve stayed, what would we be doing?”

Back into dangerous territory. Kim took in, then let out a breath. “I’d like to think we’d be eating Chinese food, drinking wine, and watching  _ Alien _ . What would we be doing if I was with you?”

“Boiler room, avoiding family, and getting groped,” Jimmy replied.

“By a yeti?”

“Well, if that’s what you’re into, I’m not one to judge.”

Kim couldn’t help but gasp out a laugh. “So what now, are you going to ask me what I’m wearing? Because it’s sweatpants and a t-shirt, sorry to disappoint.”

“What makes you think that’s disappointing? I’ll have you know I spent forty to forty-six and a half minutes fantasizing about you in sweatpants just today. And let’s not discuss the rest of the week, because-”

“Shut  _ up _ ,” Kim said, squinching her way into the sofa and dissolving into giggles. “Okay, fine. So if you were here, we’d be on the sofa…”

“Okay, interesting,” Jimmy said.

“Trying to watch  _ Alien _ , but you are way too into my sweatpants,” Kim continued.

“Well, I mean, I’m only following what my animal nature dictates.”

“Annnnd I would just have to remark, hey, you seem very interested in padded winter leisure wear,” Kim said.

“You’ve got me. You have found my exact fetish. Comes from growing up in Chicago, you know, if you were wearing one of those hats, with the ear flaps, I’d be blowing my load right now.”

Kim actually threw back her head and laughed. “Right, exactly. Just at the very sexiest moment in  _ Alien _ \- you know, when the alien bursts out of John Hurt’s chest - I’d sit up and pull my earflap hat out from the couch cushions and put it on my head, and say ‘do you want me now baby?’”

“You know I never seen you look so good,” Jimmy shot back, his voice getting a bit gravelly.

“Oh and -  _ and _ ,” Kim said, actually sitting up on the sofa and jabbing a finger into the air, “I’d do that accent, like, from  _ Fargo _ ? Yah, sure, you want to nail my ass, you betcha!”

“Oh my  _ god _ , you have it exactly, Jimmy said. But underneath that, he was actually breathing rhythmically, loud enough that Kim stopped.

“Are you actually jerking off to this?” she said, incredulous.

“Jesus, I’m wedged between two household appliances on Christmas day, could you not judge me for a minute?”

“Okay-y,” Kim said, sitting back and pulling her phone closer to her mouth. “I’m not judging. Just tell me what you’re really thinking about.”

“Well obviously you. But let’s give the sweatpants a rest for a bit - what about that dress, from the party?”

“Oh yeah?” Kim said, purring it a little bit, just because she was hoping he’d tell her about how nice she looked in her dress. “Okay, I’m wearing it, what do you think?”

“I think that I want to run my hands from your shoulders to your thighs, just feeling the fabric against your skin,” Jimmy said. There wasn’t any humor in his voice this time; this was serious.

“Well-ll,” Kim said,  “I’m not wearing a bra or underwear under it. So it’s all silk and skin. What do you think about that?”

He didn’t answer right away, but Kim thought she heard him hiss a breath in between his teeth. “I think I’m pulling up your skirt and pushing you against that car door.”

“Okay-y,” Kim said, “I think I’m being pushed against that car door and - uh -” she hesitated, not knowing quite what she ought to be doing. This was actual phone sex, wasn’t it? So she ought to make it good. “Your hand is - uh - between my legs, right? And - uh -” She stalled. Could she say “clit” or would that be too weird?

“Yeah,” came Jimmy’s voice, warm and thick enough that Kim forgot her momentary embarrassment. 

“Well, it’s cold out. The rest of me is freezing, like I’m a statue. But where your fingers are, it’s warm. No - hot.” Experimentally, she slid her hand between her legs. “And slick,” she corrected, finding this to be true.

“ _ Je _ sus,” Jimmy said, then quickly, “don’t stop there.”

“Uh, I think it’s your turn,” Kim said. “Pull your weight. You know, figuratively.”

“ _ Ugh _ , fine. You’re hot, and I can’t stand waiting. I have to be in you - that’s okay?”

The scene flooded back to Kim - her, cold against the car door, Jimmy warm and hard on her thigh. “Very okay,” she said, and when he exhaled, she could feel herself pinned, her thighs clenched to prop herself against him. “Go slow.”

His breathing was going ragged. “All I can see,” he said, “is a strand of your hair across your throat, and my god, you’re so cold.”

Kim tilted her head back across the arm of her sofa, really finding her rhythm now, the grit and glitter of her orgasm within easy reach. “I just - every time you breathe out it’s warm,” she said, “and I think maybe one of my shoes fell off, and I don’t care.” She was babbling now, but anything that contributed to the realism of the scenario now in her head was helping. “And any second now, the party’s going to end, and everyone’s going to come outside but I don’t  _ care _ , the only thing I want right now is - you, breathing out - your breath in my mouth.”  And all at once the sensation overwhelmed her - hot breath on cold skin, and she came, shuddering against her own hand.  

Somewhere during this, she heard Jimmy gasp “God, Kim, oh my  _ god _ ,” and then it was just her again, lying on her sofa, climax dissolving around her. It was a minute before she thought she could speak again.

“So,” she said. “When are you coming back again?”

“Not soon enough. My god.”

“Hmm,” Kim hummed, grinning. “Five days.”

“I’m counting them.”

“One-handed.”

“Okay, that’s not fair-” Jimmy started, then said “what?” in a way that made clear he wasn’t talking to Kim.

“Mm,” Kim said. “Family?”

“Mom’s leaving, I guess. About time. Remember what I said about that peace treaty? She’ll be throwing her antique cow creamer at his head in a couple minutes.”

“Are you going to say good bye?”

“I’d better,” Jimmy said, “unless I want passive-aggressive voice messages from here til June.”

“Call me tomorrow?”

“Wouldn’t miss it.”

“Jimmy,” Kim said, not sure where she was going with it, just wanting his name in her mouth for one brief moment.

Jimmy hissed a breath out through his teeth. “Kim.”

“Good night,” she said.

“Merry Christmas.”

“You too,” she said. “Bye.”

“Bye.”

Once Jimmy had hung up, Kim stayed on her sofa dozing a bit, feeling effervescent and heavy all at once. She decided not to continue her movie marathon -  _ Die Hard _ , after all, could wait. She wanted to keep the feeling she’d felt, that maybe she’d found a place to burrow into, to call home. In a few minutes, she told herself, she’d get up off the sofa, turn off her lights, throw out her takeout containers and stopper her wine bottle and go to sleep. But not quite yet. Now she just wanted to revel in this unexpected comfort.

_ Five days _ , she thought,  _ just five _ .

A day had never felt so long.

  
A day off on Christmas was nice enough, but Kim was relieved to go to work the next morning. The office was pleasantly deserted, with most of her coworkers having taken off, meaning she was able to work without interruption on the few projects she had going. She even managed to start clearing papers off of her desk and into file folders, thinking that for once she might be able to start the new year with a clean office.

All of this felt like a necessary distraction. She seized on the most minute tasks in order to stop herself watching the seconds crawl past. She even worked through the weekend, just so that she could do something besides stare at her apartment walls, wanting Jimmy and not having him. She filled her evenings with television, and her office with music, blocking her thoughts out as much as she could. Jimmy did call once an evening, but family demands kept calling him away. Mostly, the demands came in the form of Chuck interrupting, saying they were going to dinner, to see this or that cousin, to visit their mother and stepdad.

Jimmy always let out an irritated sigh at these summons. “Sorry.”

“No,” she always said, “it’s okay. Go ahead, I’ll see you soon.” Then he’d hang up, and leave Kim feeling as though she were about to claw herself up a wall.

By Monday the 30th, Kim’s desk was the cleanest it had been since she’d first moved into her office. Fortunately, the rest of the firm had started trickling back to work, so she began to get busier. She spent the morning on a research project for Winnifred, and hit send on her write-up just as she heard a knock on her office door. She looked up and was startled to see Howard smiling genially at her.

“Kim,” he said. “Happy holidays.”

“Hi… Howard, you too,” she replied, trying to cover her bafflement.

“I was just looking for some company for lunch,” he said. “Would you like to come with?”

“Uh-” Kim started. This was unprecedented. Sure, she’d had lunch with Howard along with the rest of their litigation group while working a project, but never just with him. Then again, Howard was a partner, and when a partner asked an associate to lunch, it wasn’t a request. “Sure,” she said brightly. “I was just finishing up.”

Howard drove them both in his Jaguar, and Kim’s stomach twisted a bit when he pulled into the parking lot of the seafood restaurant where the Christmas party had taken place. It hadn’t even been a week since that night, she realized. She caught herself surreptitiously trying to spot the space where she’d parked her car, then forced herself to stop, look ahead, chat with Howard as though she had nothing on her mind but a pleasant lunch.

Howard was greeted with the usual fuss from the host and waitstaff as they entered the restaurant, and they were quickly ushered to a table. It was pretty crowded, filled with families in holiday best, slump shouldered grandmothers next to little girls squirming in dresses with Peter Pan collars and pristine white tights, as well as suited men and women with sleek handbags and briefcases propped next to their chairs.

Howard opened his menu and said “the ceviche with grapefruit and yuzu is really excellent - what are you going to start with?”

Kim felt a surge of gratitude - it was kind of Howard to signal to her what she was allowed to order, especially since, as the woman at the table, she’d have to place her order first. “I was thinking the chestnut soup,” she said.

“Very seasonal,” Howard said, shutting his menu with a light clap. “Did you have a nice holiday?”

“Yes, thanks, I hope you did as well.”

“I certainly did. Did you do anything special?”

“Oh no - just the usual,” Kim said, hoping he wouldn’t ask her to explain what “the usual” was. “And you?”

“Yes, the same, we go to Aspen,” Howard replied. “Do you ski?”

“Oh - no,” said Kim.

“You should learn!” Howard said, and he sounded sincere. “It’s great fun, very easy to pick up. I got my niece Alice her first pair of skis this year, and we spent all day on the learning slope. She’s a natural.”

“That’s fantastic,” Kim said with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. “What a great present.” It was, honestly, more than she could conceive - a little girl getting a pair of skis at Christmas. But then, Howard seemed to have been grown in a lab for just such Rockwellian scenarios.

She was spared from further Christmas gift talk by their waiter, who took their orders for iced tea and appetizers with brisk efficiency. And then it was shop talk, Howard waxing effulgent about what a great year Hamlin McGill had, her impressive billable hours, and a project or two that he’d been thinking of putting her on. This lasted through Kim’s chestnut soup and into her skate grenobloise, and her anxiety mounted with every bite she took. Howard had not asked her to lunch to talk about the state of the firm - but he was waiting until they were well into their entrees to get to whatever point he was going to make. She wanted to shove her plate to the middle of the table and yell at him to just spit it out already - but that wasn’t something you did when you were an associate out to lunch with a partner. So she sat, cut into the firm white flesh of her fish, chewed and swallowed, the slickness of the buerre noisette cut by the lemon and caper on the back of her tongue.

“Now Kim,” Howard said, cutting into the meaty cushion of one of his coquilles St.-Jacques, “like I said, you’ve had an excellent year. And that’s on top of all of your previous years with us. You’ve proven you’re a hard worker, you're capable, and you have a head for this business.”

This was it - this was the point. Kim held her breath.

“Do you remember what Chuck said to you? At the beginning of your first year?”

“Um-” Kim started, swallowed her fish, and started again. “I do, actually. He said that if we were diligent and did the work, our careers would flourish.”

“Yes!” Howard said, flashing his row of neat white teeth. “Very good. Well, he says that to all of our first years of course, but he is right. If you want a future in this firm, you have to do the work - and you’ve more than proven that you can do just exactly that.”

Kim was elated enough at this that it actually surprised her when Howard said “but.”

“But?” she repeated, and Howard gave her a look that was difficult to categorize. It wasn’t exactly smug, but it was the look of someone who’d been expecting the need to impart some deep wisdom upon an inferior subject, and that subject had just provided the perfect opportunity to do so. It was lofty and pitying all at once, and it made the hairs on Kim’s neck stand on end.

“Yes, Kim, but there’s more to this business than just doing the work. If you want a future at HHM, you also need to cultivate your image. Do you understand what I mean?”

“I think so?” said Kim, but her voice was uncertain, and she despised herself for it.

“Image,” Howard repeated. “How you dress. How you speak. Whom you associate with.”

The edges of Kim’s vision seemed to go dark. 

Howard took another bite of scallop. “You are an investment to this firm,” he said. “You in particular. We’ve invested a great deal of resources in you, and we believe that our investment is a good one. However, like any good investment, we expect to earn a return. I think you can go far at HHM, Kim, but if you want to do that… you’ll have to be more careful.”

Kim clenched her jaw shut. “You can just say that you mean Jimmy,” she said, regretting the words as soon as they came out of her mouth. Howard was trying to avoid mentioning Jimmy by name, that much was clear - but Kim didn’t think she could handle any more generalities. Still, what if he got offended? Decided the discussion was over?

Howard only smiled at her, a thin tight smile that seemed to say that he regretted having to do this, but if she couldn’t take the hint, he’d have to lay things out for her own good. “So you are involved with him?” he asked.

“I didn’t say that,” Kim snapped. “We’re friends. I asked him to the holiday party - that’s all.”  _ God, please let him buy it, _ she thought, as soon as the words were out of her mouth.  _ Please don’t let him have seen _ . They’d been out where anyone could have seen them - Jesus Christ how could she have let that happen?

“Oh, you’re friends,” Howard said, his eyebrows lifting ever so slightly. “So he must have told you about what happened in Chicago.”

Kim forgot what she was about to say as soon as she opened her mouth, but she knew any pause would be deadly. “He mentioned a kerfluffle,” she said.

“Excuse me?” Howard said. “A what?”

“A… kerfluffle?” Kim said, baffled.

“Kerfuffle,” Howard replied.

“What?” Kim said, more confused than ever. Howard’s smile became tacked at the corners.

“There’s only one ‘l” in ‘kerfuffle,’ Kim,” Howard said, pronouncing the word carefully.

Humiliation bloomed bright and metallic in Kim’s mouth. She had, from an early age, been a great reader, but had never heard anyone pronounce the more unusual words in the English language until she’d started her secondary education. She still sat bolt upright in bed from time to time at the memory of when she’d botched the pronunciation of “segue” during a college class. The shame remained - fresh, hot, close to her surfaces, ready to ooze out of her pores at the slightest provocation.

“Right,” was all she said, and she kept her face still.

“The… kerfuffle,” Howard repeated. “And I suppose he told you about how that led to his arrest?”

Kim kept her face still, but the sharp intake of her lungs betrayed her. Howard’s expression softened, but his eyes narrowed. “His narrow escape from being labeled a sex offender?”

She didn’t dare breathe. Her hands clenched her knife and fork compulsively, the knuckles going white in her peripheral vision.

“Not to mention the divorce - ah,  _ multiple _ divorces, I should say,” Howard continued. “And that’s only the activities for which he’s been caught. Chuck was able to use his considerable influence to allow Jimmy a second chance, of course - get him out of Illinois, get the charges dropped before they could go to trial. Chuck asked about getting him a job in our mail room but-” Howard waved his fork before him dismissively, cream sauce dripping from the tines - “the partners didn’t consider him to be a good investment for HHM. Let’s put it that way.”

Kim’s bottom teeth scraped against the top teeth as she opened her mouth. “Could we put it,” she started, “in a way that lets me know what this has to do with me?”

“Oh  _ Kim _ ,” Howard said, and this time, his tone and his smile were warm, inviting. “I’m not saying you can’t do anything you want in your own free time. But I am asking you to remember that your choice of partner says a lot about where you expect to go in life. And that’s something we do pay attention to. Can you do that for me? Remember, that is?”

Kim opened her mouth, then shut it again, her hands clenching so tightly around her silverware that she thought they might have to be pried from her hands. But they were interrupted by their waiter, who sidled to their table and asked if she were finished enjoying her meal.

“Yes,” Kim said, “thank you,” and let her fork and knife tumble into her plate before the busboy swept them away.

“Would you be interested in our dessert menu?” the waiter said, clasping his hands behind his back, his expression one of careful, dispassionate interest.

“I think we can skip dessert, don’t you, Kim?” Howard asks pointedly.

“Yes, I think so,” Kim said back, just as barbed. “I’m full.”

  
For the rest of the day, Kim sat in her office chair, muscles clenched in her back, her shoulders, her jaw. She stared at her computer screen, reading the same e-mail over and over, without registering what the words meant. Other words kept popping into her head, disconnected and barbed.

_ divorce. arrest. sex offender. _

She turned them over in her mind, examining them for meaning, but they slid away from her. It wasn’t until after three in the afternoon that she managed to shake herself, ordering herself to think about this in a systematic way.

After all, what had Howard said, really? Divorce? Multiple divorces? That wasn’t a big deal. That was fine. Better than fine, that meant he wasn’t lying to her about being single when he was actually married, right? Of course, it hadn’t occurred to her until now that this was something he’d be capable of lying to her about.

_ And it wasn’t like he lied _ , she thought.  _ He just didn’t tell me. And that’s fine. I don’t tell him everything. _

But still, three years they’d known each other. Three years, you’d think the subject of divorces might have come up.

_ No, _ she told herself,  _ it’s fine. Divorce is fine. Arrest though- _

Arrest. Jesus.

_ Arrest, not conviction _ , she corrected.  _ Arrest is nothing. Arrest isn’t even charged. _

But he had been charged - hadn’t Howard said that? That Chuck had to step in, to get the charges dropped, to get him out of the state.

And that took her to  _ sex offender _ , and there she stopped.

_ It might be nothing _ , she considered.  _ There are those cases where eighteen year old kids have sex with their sixteen year old girlfriends and suddenly they’re on the registry for life, right? _

But if the arrest came after multiple divorces, Jimmy certainly wasn’t a minor when it happened.

_ A misunderstanding, then. A mistake. _

But a mistake that required a well-connected attorney brother to fix. A mistake that forced him to leave the state.

_ But he’s back to visit! _ she thought frantically.  _ Not like there’re state troopers waiting for him at the border. The charges were dropped. He wasn’t convicted _ .

And yet.

Her breathing was quick - too quick, she realized, putting her hands, palms down, on her desk, and trying to steady herself.  _ It’s nothing - it has to be nothing- _

Her computer speakers pinged with an incoming e-mail, and Kim nearly hit the ceiling. It was from Winnifred, and it was red-flagged - follow-up questions about this morning’s research right from the client, and they needed them answered by tomorrow morning. Kim let out a breath, sheer relief coursing through her. Here was something she could do, something she could solve. She rolled her shoulders, cracked her neck, responded to Winnifred and got to work.

The work would have taken her through the early evening, but Kim stalled, lingering over unimportant points, chasing down citations that weren’t strictly necessary. Any errant thought was driven out of her head with almost military zeal. But Winnifred’s e-mails asking about her progress began to get testy by eight in the evening, and Kim was forced to wrap up before she wanted to. She proofread her e-mail three times, and managed to keep from hitting “send” until ten before nine. But as soon as she did, ever thought she’d kept at bay came crashing in, water toppling the flashboards. When she got back to her apartment, she couldn’t remember the drive home. Only an acrid taste in her mouth told her that she’d chain smoked all the way there.

The bottle of Gewurztraminer was still in her fridge, unfinished since Christmas Day. She poured the remainder into a tumbler and gulped without tasting it as she paced the length of the living room. She avoided looking at the sofa, and tried to think of what she was going to do with Jimmy McGill.

The taste of buerre noisette, slick on her tongue, the salt of the caper at the tip. The clink of the silverware and glasses, the stifled whine of that little girl at the nearby table, stuffed into an itchy, stiff dress. Howard’s smug expression as he pronounced the words - sex offender.  _ Sex offender _ .

“I don’t believe it,” she muttered, again startling herself by speaking aloud. She stopped mid-pace. She didn’t believe it. But why should she? Just because Howard had told her didn’t mean it was true.

_ There’s no reason for Howard to lie. _

Well no, that was true, Kim considered, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t made a mistake - or misheard - or something.  _ Anything _ .

She threw her head back and drank the dregs of her tumbler of wine, letting out a breath and swaying slightly, eyes closed, when she’d finished.

Really, the only person who knew for sure what happened was Jimmy. If she wanted to find out what was true, he was the one who she’d have to ask.

She sighed, and crossed to the table where she’d dumped her handbag, digging for her phone. She flipped it open to find four missed calls, all Jimmy.

_ Christ _ , she thought, then stopped herself with her thumb hovering over the “call” button.  _ No _ . 

This wasn’t a conversation to have over the phone. She wanted to - no,  _ had _ to - look him in the face when she asked him. It was just common courtesy, she told herself, trying not to think that she wanted to see the look on his face when she asked him. Just to be sure.

She stuffed her phone back into her bag as insurance against him calling back. It was just half a day. They could wait that long, and then she’d ask him, and he’d explain how it wasn’t a big deal, and they could forget about this whole thing. It would be fine.

_ It’ll be fine _ , as she brushed her teeth, scraping her tongue with the bristles until it tingled.

_ It’ll be fine _ , over and over again, as she tossed herself in her bed.

_ It’ll be fine _ , upon waking up in the dark before dawn, feeling her stomach clench as though in a fist.

In her office, sitting before her computer once again, she barely registered the thank-you e-mail sent by Winnifred, telling her the client was very pleased, telling her she’d gone above and beyond. Every time she breathed in, it was like sucking down cold paint. 

She did the best she could in the quiet of New Year’s Eve morning, stretching out the minor tasks before her, listening as the office emptied following the office manager’s e-mail that the office would close at noon. She had to fight the urge to scoop up her handbag and flee, shut herself up in her apartment and not come out until the holiday was over - but then, she’d just be putting off the inevitable confrontation.  _ It’ll only get worse. Just go through with it. It’ll be fine. _

And then she heard him, boisterously wishing Brenda a happy New Year, and making his way down the hall, assistant by assistant.

She closed her eyes, took a breath, and rearranged her face.

“Hey-y,” he said, rounding the doorframe, “knock knock.” 

She looked up. “Hi, Jimmy.”

Jimmy’s face froze, and she cursed herself for not hiding herself better - but there wasn’t anything she could do about it now.

Jimmy’s mouth quirked up a bit, as he tried to put the bounce back into his voice. “So - uh. How ya been?”

“I’m fine,” she said, too quickly, and the line between his eyebrows grew deeper.

“You - ah. Thinking about getting outta here?”

_ It’ll be fine. _

“Actually, I was just going to have a cigarette. Come with?”

Jimmy’s acceding smile looked like a grimace, and Kim avoided looking at him as she pulled the pack out of her handbag. She couldn’t avoid walking past him, and had to give him a smile too, a quick spasm of her mouth as she blinked too many times. It was a relief to walk down the hall and hear him behind her, knowing she wouldn’t have to face him again until they got to the elevator.

Once in the garage, she spent a little too long fishing a cigarette out of the pack, and ducked her head unnecessarily to light it, bringing her elbows close into her ribcage to stop them shaking.  _ It’ll be fine. Get it over with. _

“I have to ask you something,” she said, before looking back up. All traces of geniality were gone from his face, he looked cornered.

He swallowed, throat dipping. “Okay. Shoot.”

“What happened in Cicero?”

Jimmy opened his mouth, puffing out a plosive.

“I mean, before you came west,” Kim corrected. “The - trouble you got into. What happened?”

He stared at her, mouth open, lip curling up on one side. “What-” he finally said, stopped, then started again. “Did Chuck-”

“No,” Kim said hurriedly. “He - I haven’t talked to Chuck.”

Jimmy closed his mouth, chin wrinkling. “ _ Howard _ ,” he said. “What did he-”

“Jimmy,” Kim interrupted sharply. “It doesn’t matter who said what. Just - just tell me what happened. Okay?”

He let out a long breath through his nose, staring at her, hard-eyed. “It was nothing,” he said. “Stupid kid’s stuff. Blown out of proportion. That’s it.”

Kim realized that she’d forgotten her cigarette. It had burned almost halfway down, the ash long and filigreed in the wedge of light. She tapped it, then dragged. The smoke felt cold in her lungs. “If it’s nothing, you can tell me.”

Jimmy flicked his eyes away, and now Kim was truly terrified. Words began to swirl in her head again.  _ Assault? Rape? Please god, say it wasn’t kids- _

“I left,” Jimmy said, the words come out staccato, “and I left that behind me. It’s done. It’s over.”

Kim exhaled a blue stream. “You know it doesn’t work that way,” she said, and when he clenched his mouth tight, she said “don’t you think you could - just - trust me? A little? Just tell me.”

He didn’t speak, didn’t look at her. Exasperated, she stubbed her cigarette so that the filter bent double. “Jimmy.”

“Not  _ you _ , okay?” Jimmy blurted, bringing his hands up, half-pleading. “I could - anybody but  _ you _ .”

“Why?” she asked, but received no answer. Jimmy McGill, it seemed, was at a loss for words.

She almost gave in. She felt herself cave, saw herself taking his face between her palms, telling him that it was okay, that this was stupid, that they should forget the whole thing and just go back to her place. But then she saw Howard before her, tasted buerre noisette slick as shame in her mouth. She breathed in, straightened her back.

“Jimmy,” she said. “Either you tell me, or-” She let her eyes flick to the elevator.

Jimmy swallowed convulsively, looked at the floor. “It was just - this kerfluffle-”

“Kerfuffle,” she said reflexively.

“What?”

“Kerfuffle,” she repeated, pronouncing the word carefully. “There’s only one ‘l’.”

She couldn’t have said just how she knew how badly she’d hurt him. It was maybe the set of his face, the slight purse of his mouth, or narrowing of his eyes. But she knew, just as surely as she knew any attempt to take it back would only make it worse. They watched each other, waiting for the other to speak.

It was Jimmy who broke the silence. “It was nothing,” he said, his voice firm and final.

Kim let out her breath. “Okay, Jimmy,” she said. “If that’s how you want to do it, okay.”

She dropped her cigarette butt on the floor, opened the door to the vestibule, walked in. He followed, and for a moment she had the tiniest kindling of hope that he wouldn’t let her go. She pressed the up button, waited for the doors to slide open, turned to face him once inside.

He opened his mouth one last time as the doors began to slide shut, but he didn’t dart out a hand to stop them before they closed.

She stared at the doors, baffled.  _ This wasn’t how it was supposed to go _ , she thought.  _ It was supposed to be fine. It was supposed to be fine. _

She should be shoved into the corner, propped against the handrail, skirt hiked up her thighs, damn the security camera. She couldn’t even bring herself to lean against the wall. It didn’t occur to her to cry. When the elevators opened on the second floor, she smiled warmly at the cluster of associates waiting, about to leave early, and walked calmly to her office.

She worked until the halls went silent around her, until there was no conceivable task that could be eked from her to-do list. She scooped up her things, and forced herself to take the elevator back down to P3, despite an almost overwhelming urge to take the stairs instead.

When the doors opened up into the vestibule, it was empty, save for the wastebasket near the exit. The wastebasket now lay on its side, a deep dent distorting her reflection, the lid upside-down in one corner. She stared at it for a moment, then bent and set it upright, straightening the plastic liner bag, and replacing the lid. She swiveled the can so that the dent faced the wall before she walked out the door to find her car.

 

Life without Devaj was one thing, but Kim was not prepared for life without Jimmy McGill.

It was a few days before it struck Kim that she didn’t actually have friends. Well, no, she  _ had _ friends, but they’d moved, chasing plum associate positions to California, Colorado, Houston, and her e-mail correspondence had tapered off over a year ago. She tried again, sending sheepish, short missives to those to whom she’d been particularly close, but wasn’t surprised when she received tepid responses when she got any at all. She’d let them go for too long, and they’d moved on.

Kim was left to fill her days with work, so that was what she did. It got easier as the year turned itself, as clients returned from their holidays and began to make their demands. It was easier to pretend that there was nothing she’d rather do than work when she stopped having time to do anything other than work. Her days began to flow past her, the monotony of wake up, work, watch tv, sleep and up again enough to fill the clock. She tried not to think about anything else.

She was surprised one morning by Madison slithering around her doorframe, tapping timidly. Kim hadn’t spoken to Madison since the Christmas party - not out of anger or malice, but because it didn’t occur to Kim to go and talk to her. Seeing Madison made Kim suddenly regret her thoughtlessness. It was kind of Madison to have warned her about Devaj, and she hadn’t acknowledged it. She put on what she hoped was a friendly smile. “Hey.”

“Hey-y, Kim,” Madison said. “So, listen, a couple of us are going out to Randall’s tonight? And I was wondering if you wanted to come?”

Kim was shocked enough that she had to force herself to speak. “Um - sure. Yeah. That would be great.”

“Oh good!” Madison said, grinning. “I mean, because Lila couldn’t go, and - oh-” Her smile dropped. “I mean I would have asked you anyway, but-”

“It’s fine,” Kim said quickly. She knew that Lila and Devaj were friends from the Asian-American diversity group at the firm. Lila had never been particularly warm to Kim, and once the breakup happened, she’d naturally gravitated to Devaj. While Kim understood that some people would have been upset about this, she didn’t understand why that would be. “It’s nice of you to ask me. I’d love to go.”

This last was laying it on a bit thick, Kim thought, but Madison seemed to like it. She smiled again. “Great! Lobby at six, okay?”

“Okay,” Kim said.

She began to join Madison’s group, going out for drinks every few weeks. It wasn’t exactly a social life. She sat at the same table as her fellow associates, sipped at a single vodka tonic over the course of two hours, smiled at their jokes and stories, made small talk when she had to, endured Ronald’s hugs when they began to border on inappropriate. And all of that was fine, but it didn’t make her feel less lonely.

Madison took her aside one night as she excused herself to go to the restroom.

“Hey, Kim,” she said. “What do you think about Ronald?”

“Ronald?” Kim said, a bit taken aback. “He’s… a good guy.” She prodded the crevices of her brain, but wasn’t able to come up with anything more specific. “Why?” She glanced down at Madison’s hands, which were clutched around her handbag strap - she’d upgraded to Gucci - or was that downgraded? Kim wasn’t sure. But her left hand didn’t have a ring, and Kim’s memory flashed back to that fateful first night out with her fellow first years. So Madison’s boyfriend hadn’t proposed, and she’d issued that ultimatum. Maybe she was interested in Ronald now - it wouldn’t be too surprising. They worked together in Jose’s practice group, and they’d stayed close since their first day of work.

Madison didn’t seem mollified by Kim’s assessment. She twisted the strap of her handbag. “Just wondered,” she said, and drifted back to the group’s table.

Winter melted into spring, although the only change Kim really noticed was the weather. When Madison and Ronald began joking one evening about spring break, Kim was startled to realize that Easter had come and gone without her noticing. She thought back to that little girl from the restaurant, in the Peter Pan collared dress, wondering if she’d had to be wrestled into those itchy white tights for another holiday.

One afternoon in late May, a knock on Kim’s door made her look up. She expected to see Madison with another happy hour invite, but it was Devaj, hands in his pockets, his mouth set. “Hey, Kim,” he said.

“Hi,” said Kim, wary.

“Can we talk?”

Kim considered the request. She hadn’t spoken to Devaj since the Christmas party, and wasn’t quite sure if she wanted to break her streak. But then, when she checked herself, she found that she didn’t want to put in the effort to be rude. She sat back in her chair. “Okay.”

“So, I just wanted to let you know that I’m leaving HHM,” Devaj said.

“Oh,” said Kim. “Have you got - uh-”

“I’m going to teach at UNM,” Devaj said, answering her before she could get her question out. “They’ve been after me to start teaching full time, so I decided - y’know. I’d accept.”

“Oh,” Kim repeated, letting the warmth drain from her voice. “Good timing.”

Devaj sighed. “Yes, Bea’s graduated,” he said. “That’s kind of what I wanted to talk to you about.”

Kim didn’t say anything to this, and after the moment of silence, Devaj continued.

“I wanted to apologize,” he said. “I didn’t mean for you to find out about Bea like that.”

Kim raised an eyebrow. “ _ That’s _ what you wanted to apologize for?”

“Well, no,” Devaj said, “but I figured it would be a start.”

Kim sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. “Okay,” she said, “get started.”

“I was going to tell you after the holiday,” Devaj said, “when things were a little less… crazy. But Bea got obsessed with this idea that we should do something about our anniversary-”

_ Mensiversary _ , Kim thought, and had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from saying it.

“And it was the night of the holiday party, and she kept telling me to take her, and you - you just didn’t seem to care that much.” He sighed. “You didn’t have to sic your new boyfriend on me, you know.”

Kim hadn’t expected that the mere mention of Jimmy could cut into her the way it did. She opened her mouth to say something banal, like “he’s not my boyfriend,” or “I didn’t sic him,” but the only thing to come out of her mouth was breath.

Devaj’s expression softened as he misinterpreted the look on Kim’s face. “Sorry,” he said more quietly. “I just meant it looked like you didn’t care.”

“I cared,” Kim said, then pressed her lips together.

Devaj let out a mirthless little huff of laughter. “I’m the one who’s supposed to be apologizing here, right?”

“Right,” Kim answered, not giving him the release of laughing with him.

Devaj cast his eyes down, focusing on the surface of Kim’s desk. “I just wanted to say that I know what I did was wrong, and I hurt you. And I’m sorry. I wish it had gone another way. I just wanted to tell you that before I left.”

Kim found herself a little taken aback. She had expected a plea for her not to say anything to Howard or the UNM administration about his relationship, or a string of excuses. She hadn’t expected to find herself a little moved.

“Okay,” she said. “Thanks.” And then, “good luck at UNM.”

“Thanks,” Devaj said. “That means a lot.” When he left her office, he didn’t look back.

_ So, that’s it _ , Kim thought. She didn’t feel moved any more, she felt discarded, like an unpleasant chore that had been gotten out of the way before Devaj could move on, his conscience finally clear. She considered being angry at herself for letting him off the hook so easy, but then decided she was just too tired. She should just cut her losses, be glad it was over, duck out of whatever farewell drinks celebration the associates would hold in his honor, and be glad she wouldn’t have to worry about seeing him in the halls, or getting assigned to the same matter. She tried to find a trace of gratitude or relief any such emotion inside herself, but all she really felt was drained.

When Madison knocked on Kim’s door that afternoon, Kim expected the inevitable invite to Devaj’s farewell celebration, and the cringing acknowledgement when Kim refused. But Madison surprised her by hemming a bit, then saying “so, I was wondering if you wanted to go out with me and Ronald tonight, just the three of us?”

“Oh?” Kim said.

“Yeah, we’re not really feeling up to the big party, and I thought you might not be either.” There was visible relief in Madison’s face as she said this, which puzzled Kim. They made plans to meet after work, and Kim spent a few minutes trying to think of why Madison - who had always gotten along with Devaj, or so she’d thought - would be relieved at skipping his party. Then a new e-mail came in from Winnifred, and Kim forgot about it until she was packing up to leave.

Dinner with Ronald and Madison was pleasant if not thrilling. Kim trailed individual french fries through a track of ketchup as she listened to Madison and Ronald talk cheerfully about nothing in particular, though she noticed that they took care not to mention Devaj or their coworkers. All was within the bounds Kim had come to expect from her occasional outings with the two - that is, until Ronald proposed that they go to a bar after dinner.

“Oh,” said Madison brightly. “Let’s hit Randall’s.”

“Nah,” Ronald said, “The Cavern has two for one shots ‘til eight.”

“But-” Madison started, but Ronald was barreling toward the door.”

Madison turned to Kim, who said “I’ll follow you guys there,” before Madison could speak. There was no way in hell that Kim was going to get stuck at some random bar without her car.

But as it turned out, The Cavern wasn’t some random bar after all. As Kim pulled into the lot behind Madison’s car, she realized that this was where they’d gone the night before their first day of work at HHM - the night she’d met Jimmy for the first time. She tried not to let the knowledge gnaw at her as she got out of her car.

“You guys go ahead,” she said, lighting a cigarette, then waving to Madison and Ronald. She stood outside for as long as she could, and when her cigarette was smoked, told herself that she would not, could not, see Jimmy McGill when she walked inside. It was too remote a chance. It wouldn’t happen.

The bar was a good deal more crowded than she remembered it being those years ago. Maybe it had gotten more popular in the intervening time, or maybe  it was just that today was a Friday. It was much more noisy, and also looked much more divey. Kim thought back to that dessicated slice of lemon floating in Jimmy’s glass of brown. She didn’t think this bar would be serving anyone lemon slices in their drinks this evening.

Madison was perched at a small table, and waved Kim over. She had to lean in toward Kim to be heard over the bustle. “Ronald’s getting us a pitcher.”

“Okay,” Kim said, and tried to decide whether she wanted to fight the crowd around the bar to get herself a plain tonic water. After a quick survey of the crush, she decided against it. She could sip at a glass of watery beer and be okay to drive, if she took it slow.

Madison said something to her, and she missed it. “What?” she said, leaning down.

“I said,” Madison said, practically shouting now, “if you want to tell Ronald that you don’t like it here, we can-”

“Nah,” Kim said quickly, “it’s fine.” She turned away to look at the crowd more closely. If he was here - maybe not at the bar, at one of the tables-

She was distracted by Ronald plunking down a pitcher of beer and a fistful of shot glasses. The liquid in the glasses was a sickly shade of blue, and both Kim and Madison eyed them suspiciously.

“Bottoms up, ladies,” Ronald said. Madison reluctantly took one, but Kim instead snaked one of the plastic cups that came with the pitcher. She endured a few minutes of both Ronald and Madison trying to cajole her into taking the shot, but in the end, Ronald drank it.

As Madison and Ronald kept up the conversation, Kim found her attention wandering back to the crowd. It was a sea of baseball caps, buzz cuts, overdone highlights. Unsuccessful in her search, she began watching the bar door, perking up a little any time it opened, settling back down when the entrant was a stranger. If she noticed Ronald doing the same thing, she didn’t think much of it. 

What finally caught Kim’s attention wasn’t Ronald excusing himself to use the bathroom - he’d had the better part of the pitcher, after all. It wasn’t even anything that noticeable. It was just that he was a little more cheerful, a little less able to stay still. He started slapping the back of one hand into the other palm, bouncing on his toes as they stood by their table, wiping his nose when he thought no one was looking. Kim, watching him, felt a powerful double punch of nostalgia and fear - powerful enough that for a moment she believed she was eight years old again, watching as the grown ups in her grandmother’s house began dipping in and out of bathrooms, as they got louder and more twitchy, knowing that now was the time to run to a bedroom or duck behind a sofa, time to hide before the voices began to rise and the glass began to break.

“Are you okay?”

Kim jumped a little, then realized it was just Madison, leaning close.

“Sure,” she said, trying not to glance at Ronald, and failing. Fortunately, he was back to staring at the front door to the bar. When Kim looked back at Madison, she made a cringing face and mouthed  _ sorry _ .

Kim turned back to stare at the bar entrance and began drumming her fingers on the table. She began thinking of exit strategies - how to get out of here without offending the one person at work who still invited her out on a regular basis. The conversation had begun to wind down as the noise in the bar increased, the pitcher was nearly finished - not that she’d had more than half a cup. Maybe there was a way to exit gracefully, maybe say she had to get to bed early.

She thought back, with some dismay, to the night she’d left the group of first years to get hit on by Jimmy, how they hadn’t noticed she was gone until after they’d left. The way he’d looked her over, sizing her up as worthwhile. How greasy it had felt, to be looked at that way, but also how exciting - as though he’d been the only person who’d been able to see her over the course of that entire night. How startled he’d been, when she’d kissed him, how warm his mouth had been, how he’d sucked in air as though he were trying to breathe her closer. She found that she was sucking in her own breath, and made herself stop - she was acting oddly enough as it was. She just had to get out of here, calm down, get a good night’s sleep.

But then the bar’s door opened and Junie walked in, causing the air to freeze in Kim’s lungs.

Kim hadn’t seen Junie in almost ten years, but she looked the same - blonder, more sinewy, but still wearing fuchsia lipstick and staring at the room in front of her with bored, half-slit eyes.

Kim whipped her head around, praying Junie hadn’t seen her, and Madison gave her a quizzical look. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“I-” Kim started, turning her head just enough so that she could see Junie sauntering toward the bar out of the corner of one eye. She was still between Kim and the door. Kim considered taking her hair out of the ponytail, to cover her face - but then, she always had her hair in her face as a kid, the strands limp and damp from her chewing on them. Maybe when Junie’s back was turned, she could duck out without her seeing.

But the door opened again, and Kim’s stomach sank. Outlined against the darkening sky was Junie’s brother, Corey. Kim was astonished enough to stare - she thought he was supposed to be in prison for another two years at least. He’d changed more than Junie - the wisp of hair that was once nearly invisible against his upper lip had thickened into a noticeable mustache, and he wore his hair long, in a rat-tail that hung down his neck. His arms, once decorated only with a few scattered stick-and-pokes, were now full sleeves of color, shown off by an off-white wifebeater. He wasn’t trying to hide the early, amateur efforts - the “1488” done in a clumsily scrolled font now had pride of place on one shoulder, surrounded by a newer, more professional circular Celtic cross. And when he turned his head to look over the bar, Kim saw that he now sported two lightning bolts, blunt-tipped and deep red, on the side of his neck.

_ Earned his lightning bolts - Christ almighty _ , Kim thought, then jumped when Corey looked straight at her. His eyes widened in recognition, and he nodded, jerking his chin toward her.

Kim couldn’t move. Her mind cycled frantically. Now that they’d seen her what would they do? What  _ could _ they do, here, in the middle of a crowded bar? Come up to her, try to talk? Catch up to her in the parking lot if she tried to leave? Follow her to her apartment - find out where she lived? And then-

And then Kim saw Ronald nod back to Corey.

“I’m just gonna go-” Ronald said distractedly to Madison and Kim, and loped off in the direction of the bathroom. Kim watched in astonishment as Corey watched Ronald go, then followed a few feet behind him.

“Kim?” Madison was saying. “ _ Kim? _ Can you hear me?”

Kim whipped her head back to see Junie reaching over the bar, not looking in her direction.

“I have to go,” she said. “Right now.”

She hoisted her handbag and wove through the crowd, steps firm and quick, not daring to look around. She could hear Madison calling her name, following her, and she hissed “ _ shutupshutupshutup _ ” under her breath. She was five feet from the door, three feet, one. She was pushing through, she was  _ through _ , the warming spring air in her lungs and god she needed a cigarette so bad but she had to get to her car before-

“ _ Kim! _ ” Madison said, and grabbed her sleeve. Kim whirled, heart in her throat, even though she knew it was just Madison. “Are you okay?” Madison was saying fast, a little too fast, the words stumbling over her teeth and tongue. “I’m so,  _ so _ sorry, he’s been - I mean, I thought if I asked you to come with us he’d behave himself, but he’s - God, he’s getting really bad. I mean, you saw it, right? He couldn’t go even an hour?”

Kim stared at Madison, unable to understand what she was saying.

“And at work - I mean, I don’t think he’s using at work?” Madison continued, “But I think Jose is beginning to think something’s up, he keeps showing up late, and I just - I don’t know what to do.” Madison brightened a little, looking up at Kim with a gleam of hope in her face. “Maybe - now that you know about it too, we could try talking to him? Not, like, an intervention or anything, but maybe if it’s someone who’s not me he’ll listen? He’s always saying I nag-” she broke off, with a little laugh. “But if  _ you _ -”

“Do you know that guy?” Kim interrupted.

“Huh?” Madison asked, looking perturbed. 

“That guy who just came in, who followed Ronald to the bathroom.” When Madison still didn’t seem to understand, Kim said “with the tattoos?”

“Oh,” Madison said. “No, I don’t know him.” Then, with a glint of suspicion, “do you?”

“No!” Kim said quickly. She flicked her eyes to the door. How long until Corey sold Ronald whatever it was he was selling - coke? Crystal? Pills? How long until he and Junie came out that door? “Just - he looked like not - not a good guy, so-”

Madison’s face furrowed in concern. “Should we go back in? Find him?”

“God,  _ no _ ,” Kim said, almost shouting, and when Madison’s expression turned from frightened to confused, her stomach twisted. “I have to - have to go,” she stammered. “You - just tell Ronald to stay away from that guy. Okay?” She didn’t wait for an answer, but dashed to her car, peeled out of the lot, and started home. It wasn’t until she got to the highway that she realized she hadn’t turned her headlights on.

When she got back to her apartment building, she parked as close to the front entrance as she could, then looked carefully around her before leaving her car. She half-jogged to the doors, only able to breathe properly when they shut and auto-locked behind her.

“Hey,” the doorwoman said. “Happy Friday.”

Kim ignored her, but walked quickly to the elevator. She watched the glass front door until the elevator closed and began to rise, but no one entered behind her.

Once she was in her apartment, the door locked and bolted against the outside world, she turned on every single light, even the fluorescent one in the kitchen that hummed at a pitch almost to high to hear, but high enough to be irritating. She closed her curtains, went into her bedroom, and locked that door behind her as well. She sat up against her headboard, knees tucked into her chest, and sat there for a long time. The gnawing desire for a cigarette was growing, but she didn’t dare go outside again. Finally she gave in, and did something she never had before - lit up inside her own house. She sat by her open window, taking shaky drags, and pressing her mouth to her screen to expel the smoke outside. She might get fined. She probably would get fined. But she lit a second cigarette despite all of that, her hands getting steadier, her mouth scraping itself raw against the screen grid.

  
Madison stopped asking her to go out, and Kim didn’t exactly mind. She avoided both Madison and Ronald, staying in her car if she saw them in the lot walking in, or striding past them in the halls without looking at them. She felt a little sick and a little clean, having burned bridges with every friend she ostensibly had.  _ So _ , she thought once,  _ I’m finally the bitch _ .

She tried to focus on work, but work was beginning to become difficult. Winnifred had her in to discuss what Kim could do to bring more clients into the firm, the result of which was that Kim agreed to attend two conferences on white collar crime, one in New Mexico and one in Arizona. They’d satisfy her CLE requirements, but she was also required to review the attendees and organize a dinner aimed at recruiting new clients. Kim didn’t have the first idea of how to do any of these things, but understood that if she couldn’t figure it out, her tenure at HHM would not last for much longer.

And so, Kim worked. She scrutinized names, attended her conferences, gladhanded, even wore a low-cut blouse during one cocktail hour, thinking it might give her a bit of advantage. She was moderately successful, if you counted success in the number of people she spoke to, or who accepted her business card with the promise that they’d get in touch. Whether they actually would call remained to be seen, and it was completely out of Kim’s hands. She felt both relieved and repulsed, coming back to her regular office grind, knowing that she was happy that this was over, and dreading that it would all have to happen again in short order.

Her first morning back, she scrolled through the e-mails she’d ignored during her travel. She’d only read the essential missives from clients, Winnifred or Howard, and those had come few and far between, out of respect for her travel schedule. The rest were just junk - CLE ads, newsletters, funeral notices-

Kim clicked past the funeral notice, and was three e-mails ahead when she stopped, thought, clicked back.

_ The law firm of Hamlin, Hamlin and McGill is sorrowful to announce that Rosemary Brennan, nee McGill, mother of partner Charles McGill, passed away yesterday evening. _

_ Funeral arrangements will be held at Mary, Queen of Heaven Catholic Church, in Elmhurst, Illinois. We will be donating to the American Heart Association in her name, and ask that our co-workers contact Lisa Quint if they wish to make individual contributions _ .

Kim stared at her screen in disbelief for almost a minute before jumping out of her chair and scrabbling in her handbag for her phone. She punched through to Jimmy’s number without wondering why she’d never deleted him, and listened, staring out the window, at the dial tone. The burr stopped, and she half expected to hear a voice message prompt - but she didn’t. There was only silence, and maybe, very faintly, the ghost of a breath.

“Jimmy,” she said, already regretting how loud her voice sounded, how strident, how entitled. She forced herself to swallow. “Uh,” she said, “I just heard the news. I wanted - I wanted to say I’m sorry.”

Silence on the other end of the line, and then, oh miracle, his voice, hoarse and faint, but  _ there _ . “Thanks.”

She couldn’t feel herself clasp her palm to her mouth, but realized she’d done it when she began to have trouble breathing through it. “How are you holding up?”

A slightly exasperated breath. “Okay, I guess. Funeral tomorrow.”

Kim tried to think of what to say to this. “Um. A lot of hard work, I guess.”

Jimmy surprised her by giving a hard little laugh. “Nah. Not for me, anyway. Chuck has it all tied up.”

“Oh,” said Kim, a little taken aback. “Is that - I mean, uh-”

“No, it’s a good thing. I’m not good at planning and he gets along with our stepdad, unlike me, so-” another hard laugh, cut off by a suck of breath, “win-win, I guess.”

“That must be hard,” Kim blurted, without thinking too much about it.

“No, like I said, it’s actually no work for me.”

“I meant - not being able to help. Not being able to do something,” Kim said.

When the sound, a half-hiccup, half sob came over the line, she realized what she’d said, and silently cursed herself. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have-” she started.

“No, it’s okay, it’s okay,” Jimmy said, breathing hard.

“It doesn’t have to be,” Kim said. “I mean, you don’t have to be okay. You know?”  _ Stupid - God, you’re stupid _ , she berated herself, even as she said it.

“I know,” Jimmy said, “I know. Thanks.”

“I missed you,” Kim said, and held her breath.

An exhalation. “Me too.” A pause. “Actually, I’ve been thinking - I might be moving to the ABQ sometime in the not too distant future.”

“Really?” Kim asked.

“Yeah. I mean not - not because of this,” Jimmy said quickly. “I’ve just got some stuff going on, it might be a, I dunno. Good place to be for now.”

“Okay, well,” Kim said, “when you’re in town do you, ah, maybe want to get a coffee?”

Silence for several seconds, and then another inward breath. “I’d like that.”

“Okay,” she said. “Well, call me. Anytime, I mean.”

“Thanks.” A pause. “Bye, Kim.”

“Bye, Jimmy.”

Kim punched the “off” button on her phone, but stayed standing, staring out her window. She tried to think up words, and they slid from her mind, as though she were oily, repellant.  _ I’m going to see Jimmy McGill, and I don’t care _ , she thought. And that, for now, was enough.


End file.
